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O.RITY 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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THE DOOM 



OF THE 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 



BY 



SAMUEL J. BARROWS. 




BOSTON 



AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION. 

1883. 



£> 



1<&\ 



Copyright, 1883, 
By American Unitarian Association. 



1 



The Library 



WASHINGTON 



University Press: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



PREFACE. 



The great discussions in theology, both in England 
and America, during the last few years, have turned 
mainly upon two points. The first of these is the 
relation of humanity to the Future Life. In England 
the discussion on this subject was powerfully stim- 
ulated by Canon Farrar's book, " Eternal Hope." In 
America the debate, rekindled by this book, received 
a new direction and an independent impulse from the 
so-called Andover Controversy ; one result of which 
was that an Orthodox clergyman, called to a profes- 
sorship by the Trustees of that institution, was denied 
confirmation by the Board of Visitors, because of his 
charitable speculations on this subject. Candidates for 
ordination were afterwards excluded from Orthodox 
pulpits for the same reason. A conspicuous feature 
in this discussion has related to the destiny of those — 
involving the great majority of the race — who have 
no opportunity in this life to accept or even to become 
acquainted with the Orthodox theory of salvation. 
With this question before it, the American Board, at 
its last annual missionary meeting at Portland, refused 
to concede that the heathen might have a probation 
after death, and reaffirmed the motive for missionary 
work to be the necessity of saving them from an end- 
less hell. 



IV PREFACE. 



The second great subject of theological discussion 
has been the scientific criticism of the Bible. The 
influence of Dutch and German criticism has pene- 
trated to the very centre of Calvinistic strongholds. 

These two theological questions are much more 
closely related than they seem to be at first. The 
Orthodox estimate of the Bible as an infallible book 
has had much to do in determining what view shall 
be taken of the future destiny of the race. It was a 
deep conviction of the close relationship of these two 
questions which led Rev. George E. Ellis, D.D., of 
Boston, to affirm in a public address, that before 
Orthodoxy could revise its creeds, it must revise its 
estimate of the Bible. In the prolonged discussion 
which this paper awakened, an incidental statement 
of Dr. Ellis, that certain Scripture texts " are alleged 
as certifying that the vast majority of the human race 
are to be victims of endless woe," was challenged by 
an Orthodox clergyman, Rev. J. L. Withrow, D.D., of 
Park Street Church, Boston, who characterized it as 
an absolute and abominable misrepresentation of Or- 
thodoxy. As editor of the " Christian Register," the 
writer replied at length in the columns of that paper, 
aiming to fix upon Orthodoxy the responsibility of 
teaching this doctrine of the doom of the majority of 
mankind. 

This debate, and the questions that grew out of it, 
have furnished the material for this book. In the first 
three chapters the evidence presented in the original 
article has been largely augmented, especially with 
reference to modern authorities. In the fourth chap- 
ter important admissions and criticisms of Evangelical 
writers are presented concerning the moral difficulties 



PREFACE. V 

of this doctrine. Attempted mitigations, and features 
which are still unrelieved by these palliations, are 
considered in succeeding chapters ; while in a final 
chapter attention is invited to what seems to us a 
more promising and, indeed, the only adequate 
solution. 

Two things have become evident in this discussion. 
First, that Orthodoxy is not wholly ready to revise 
its belief; and secondly, that its beliefs are constantly 
suffering revision without its consent. The tenacity, 
painfully apparent, with which Orthodox bodies hold 
to ancient standards and traditional interpretations 
of Scripture, has not prevented the action of other 
solvents. The old creeds cannot be exposed to the 
atmosphere of to-day without disintegration. The 
progress of science, philosophy, and ethics has ren- 
dered progress in theology imperative. It has also 
become evident to an increasing minority of Christians 
that Orthodoxy must revise its teachings. But no revis- 
ion will satisfy the demands of an enlightened liberal 
thought and sentiment, which does not reconsider and 
restate the relations of God to human destiny, and 
reaffirm, with clarion voice, the great truth that "in 
every nation he that feareth God and worketh right- 
eousness is accepted with him," and that "as many 
as are led by the spirit of God, these are the sons of 
God." 

No apology is needed for any warmth and earnest- 
ness in dealing with a dogma so distressing to the 
feelings, so alien to the moral sense, as the Doom 
of the Majority of Mankind ; but earnestness and 
warmth are not inconsistent, we trust, with kindly 
feeling and fairness of statement. In exposing the 



VI PKEFACE. 

errors of Orthodoxy, we are not ungrateful for its 
truths. 

No better proof of the timeliness of this volume 
can be given than that Orthodoxy is earnestly seeking 
for a solution of the problems of which it treats. That 
solution may not be reached in the present discussion, 
but its attainment is only postponed. Fundamental 
questions in ethics or religion are not decided finally 
until they are decided rightly. They may be evaded 
or deferred ; but they will reappear, and knock at the 
door of the reason and the conscience till by their 
importunity they command a hearing. The disposi- 
tion of Evangelical Christians to grapple anew with 
these old questions is a grateful sign. 

There is a liberal spirit working through all the 
sects to-day. No sect has any monopoly of it, and 
none can escape its influence. It is not merely pull- 
ing down, but it is building " with a sure and ample 
base," upon broader and deeper foundations. We 
hail with joy every conquest that it makes. Let the 
liberal elements in every branch of the Christian 
Church join hands for the consummation of this con- 
structive work. What are differences in polity, ritual, 
and denominational traditions, compared with the 
work of' purifying Christianity from its corruptions, 
developing its best ideals, and making it truly repre- 
sentative of universal religion ? 

Boston, May, 1883. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Preface iii 



I, The Damnation of the Majority taught 
by Evangelical Christians as a Scrip- 
ture Doctrine 5 

II. The Damnation of the Majority taught 

by Evangelical Creeds 25 

III. This Doctrine still taught by Evangel- 

ical Denominations 49 

IV. Admissions and Criticisms 67 

V. Attempted Mitigations 95 

VI. Unmitigated Features 113 

VII. The Solution- 130 



THE DOOM 



OF THE 



MAJOKITY OF MANKIND. 



" Dark and Awful : " such are the words with which 
an eminent professor in an Evangelical Theological Semi- 
nary (Rev. W. G. T. Shedd, D.D., of Union Theological 
Seminary, New York) describes the doctrine that he 
teaches to his pupils, and proclaims from the pulpit as 
the great motive for missionary effort. What is this 
"dark and awful" doctrine? It is that "millions upon 
millions" 1 of a "miserable and infatuated race," involv- 
ing the vast majority of mankind, are doomed to ever- 
lasting woe. 

Were this merely the personal opinion of the man who 
teaches it, we should hardly think it necessary to consider 
it, notwithstanding the respect we entertain for this emi- 
nent writer and scholar. If it were the opinion of a few 
individuals only, or if it were a doctrine antiquated and 
obsolete, we should not arraign it in this paper. But it is 
a view which has been and is still extensively held within 
the limits of what is known as Evangelical Christianity. 
It is a doctrine upon which a whole system of theology 
has been built, and upon which it still rests. 

1 The Guilt of the Pagan, New York, 1864, p. 23. 



4 THE DOOM OF THE 

Three hundred years ago John Calvin, in describing 
his doctrine, used words similar to those of Dr. Shedd : 
"It is a dreadful decree, I confess." Decretum quidem 
horrible, fateor. And yet this dreadful decree has been, 
and still is, proclaimed as a part of the glad tidings which 
Jesus Christ brought into the world ! 

At the present day there are many who, while admitting 
the premises upon which the doctrine is founded, shrink 
from the conclusions to which it inevitably leads. They 
would gladly relieve Orthodoxy from the charge of having 
believed and taught that "the vast majority of the human 
race are to be the victims of endless woe." They cannot 
feel more deeply than we do the reproach of such a doc- 
trine. We welcome any argument or any confession 
which shall remove this stigma from the name of Christi- 
anity. But such argument or confession must be true to 
the facts. Orthodoxy cannot be relieved from its respon- 
sibility for this doctrine by the plea that it has never 
authoritatively taught it. 

Rev. J. L. Withrow, D.D., pastor of Park Street Church, 
Boston, is amazed that men should so "absolutely and 
abominably misrepresent the Evangelical belief concerning 
the number of the saved and lost." l When a prominent 
Orthodox minister feels called upon to deny that he per- 
sonally believes that the vast majority of the human race 
are to be victims of endless woe, we are conscious of in- 
creased respect for his opinions and his courage in 
declaring them; but when it is flatly denied that it is a 
doctrine of the system of Orthodoxy which he represents, 
the negation demands consideration. 

In the following pages we respectfully present some 
competent evidence upon the subject, — not so much that 
we may fix the shame and disgrace of the doctrine upon 
Evangelical Christians, as that we may have some ground 
for urging them to remove it. The best argument we can 

1 Christian Register, December 14, 1882; and January 4, 1883. 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 

present against this dismal doctrine is to let those who 
hold it state it for themselves. The evidence we offer 
covers the following points : — 

I. Evangelical Christians have taught this as a Scrip- 
ture doctrine. 

II. It is taught by Evangelical Creeds. 
III. It is still taught by Evangelical Denominations. 

We purpose to take these points in the order in which 
they are given, and consider them in detail. 



The Damnation of the Majority of Mankind has 
been taught by evangelical christians as a 
Doctrine of the Scriptures. 

When it is asked, " Do the Scriptures teach this doc- 
trine ? " we answer, With any fair, reasonable, scholarly 
interpretation, they do not. But we do assert, without 
fear of successful contradiction, that Orthodoxy has in- 
fused its interpretation into the Scriptures , and has 
constantly appealed to them in support of this doctrine. 

The texts which are adduced in its support are very 
numerous, and the men who have presented them have 
been as numerous as the texts. They have not been con- 
fined to any one age. In his book, " Mercy and Judg- 
ment," which followed the storm created by " Eternal 
Hope," Canon Farrar has gone into this general question 
in much detail. As a result of his examination he says: 
U I assert and shall prove that the Christian writings of 
every age abound in assertions that the few only will be 
saved? Canon Farrar proves his assertion by referring 
to the opinions of the Church Fathers. Rev. F. N. Oxen- 
ham, in his book, " What is the Truth as to Everlasting 
Punishment ? " also in reply to Dr. Pusey, has effectually 
appealed to the same sources. Some of these quotations 



6 THE DOOM OF THE 

show from what a small tincture of Scripture, diluted 
with a great deal of individual speculation, the doctrine 
was compounded. They are sufficient to confirm Mr. 
Oxenham in his conclusion that "the dominant teaching 
of all sorts of theologians since the Reformation, both 
Catholic and Protestant (with no doubt a remarkable 
exception here and there), until the last few years, has 
declared unhesitatingly this doctrine as a certain and 
terrible truth revealed to us by God." (p. 31.) 

ST. CHRYSOSTOM. 

St. Chrysostom, in his Twenty-fourth Homily on the 
Acts, preaching at Antioch, said : — 

" How many, think you, are there in our city who will be 
saved ? It is a terrible truth which I am about to utter, but 
yet I will utter it. Among so many thousands, a hundred can- 
not be found who will be saved, and even about them 1 doubt." 
{Opp. ed. Montfaucon, ix. 198 [214], b.) 

ST. AUGUSTINE. 

"Not all, nor even a majority, are saved" (Enchiridion, cap. 
24, al. 97. Opp. vi. 231 [395], ed. Bened.) 

"They [the saved] are indeed many, if regarded by them- 
selves, but they are few in comparison with the far larger number of 
those who shall be punished with the devil." (Contra Cresco- 
nium, lib. iv. cap. 63, al. 53. Opp. ix. 514 [785], ed. Bened.) 

GREGORY THE GREAT. 

" Many come to (the knowledge of) the faith, but few are led 
on to enter the heavenly kingdom." (In Evang. Horn. xix. c. 5. 
Opp. i. 1513, ed. Bened.) 

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS. 

St. Thomas Aquinas, commenting on 2 Pet. i. 10, says: — 
"For now it is a secret who are elect and who are repro- 
bates, since both are now together ; and many, who now are 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 7 

living well, are nevertheless reprobates, and many, who now 
are evil-livers, are nevertheless elect. But in the Day of Judg- 
ment, when God will winnow and purge his floor, it will then 
be evident who are elect and who are reprobates ; and that the 
elect are few and the reprobates many, since much shall be found 
of chaff and little of wheat" (See Oxenham, p. 150.) 

CORNELIUS X LAPIDE. 

Writing on the "great multitude which no man could 
number" (Rev. vii. 9), Cornelius a Lapide, the eminent 
commentator, says : — 

" From what has been said, we may estimate that in the end 
of the world the total number of all the saints and elect, who 
have ever lived anywhere in any age, will make up some hundred 
millions. The number of the reprobate will, however, be far 
greater, which will come to not only hundreds but even thou- 
sands of millions. For often out of a thousand men, — nay, even 
out of ten thousand, — scarcely one is saved." 

Cornelius says elsewhere that " a crowd of men sink 
daily to Tartarus as thick as the falling snowflakes." 
(Num. xiv. 30.) 

GIULIO CESARE RECUPITO. 

Recupito was the author of a curious book, u De Num- 
ero Praedestinatorum et Reproborum," Paris, 1664. We 
have never had access to it ; but Canon Farrar found a 
copy in the Archbishops' Library at Lambeth, and thus 
describes it : — 

" In the first chapter he argues that the number of the elect 
is fixed and definite. In the second he quotes the view of those 
who held that the number of the lost did not exceed that of the 
saved. He does not stop to argue the question generally. He 
at once assumes, as an axiom, that for six thousand years none 
but Jews could have been saved, and that now none could be 
possibly saved outside the pale of the Church ; so that countless 
millions of Mohammedans, Gentiles, and heretics are calmly 
disposed of with the oracular remark that ' their damnation is 
certain.' 



8 THE DOOM OF THE 

" He next adduces the opinion of the Fathers, and quotes in 
his favor St. Chrysostom, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and St. 
Gregory. Then he tells us from the Abbot Nilus, a revelation 
to St. Simeon Stylites that scarcely one soul was saved out of ten 
thousand, and the vision of a bishop, referred to by Trithemius 
in his * Chronicon,' about a.d. 1160, in which a hermit appeared 
to him, and said that at the hour of his death three thousand 
others had died, and that the only one saved among them was 
St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and three who went to purgatory. 
He further adduces another vision of a preacher who says that 
sixty thousand stood with him before God's bar, and all except 
three were condemned to hell ; and yet another of a Parisian 
master who appeared to his bishop, announcing that he had 
been damned, and added that ' so many souls were daily thrust 
down to hell that he could scarcely believe there were so many 
men in the world.' Indeed, he asked if the world still existed. 
For he had seen so many tumbling into the abyss that he thought 
that none could remain alive." 



Dr. Lewis Du-Moulin was Professor of History at 
Oxford. We have before us his little work, found in 
Harvard College Library, and bearing the following 
title : — 

" Moral Reflections upon the Number of the Elect, Proving 
plainly from Scripture Evidence, etc., That not One in a Hun- 
dred Thousand (nay probably not One in a Million), from Adam 
down to our Times, shall be Saved. By Dr. Lewis Du-Moulin, 
Late History Professor of Oxford. London : Printed for 
Richard Janeway, in Queens-Head Alley, in Pater- Noster-B,ow, 
MDCLXXX." 

The doctrine of this book may be inferred from the 
title ; but we quote some interesting passages : — 

" Some, who are but few in Number, as Ccelius Secundus 
Curio, de amplitudine regni gratioz, have indeavoured to prove, 
That the Number of the Saved Ones, is much more great, than 
that of the Damned. Others make almost an equal division of 
them, as Zuinglius : But the most believe, that the Number 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 9 

of the Damned is incomparably greater, than those that are 
Saved; and that there is not above one Saved of a hundred 
Thousand, or rather of a Million, from Adam, e\en to the 
Day of Judgment.'' (p. 1.) 

"Jesus Christ sayes, that his Flock is small ; that there are 
but few persons that enter into the Kingdom of Heaven ; that 
when he shall come again upon the Earth, he shall not find faith 
in it ; that all the World shall run after the Beast: That the 
Number of the Elect is very little in Comparison of those that 
are Called, and Consequently, that the Number of the Called is 
infinitely less, than that of those who are not Called, and that 
know not what the Christian Religion is. For if you suppose 
that before Jesus Christ there was but one Called among a 
Hundred Thousand, if not indeed a Million of Men, and that 
among a Hundred Called, it was but a peradventure that one 
was Chosen ; the Number of the Elect before the Advent of 
Jesus Christ will amount to very little ; for it is easy to shew by 
History, that, I will not say of a Hundred, but of Five Hun- 
dred, or a Thousand Called in Israel, scarce will you find one 
Faithful ; insomuch, that though the Called People were so 
greatly numerous, the Prophets, particularly Esaiah, complain, 
that hardly one believed their Report, or Preaching." (p. 11.) 

" To conclude, I would refer my self to the judgment of any 
sober, considering person, what a vast and almost an infinit 
proportion in number one should find, if from Adam's days 
down to ours, there should be a comparison made of the Sum 
total of the Elect, with that of those who are not Elected : I 
believe that this Proportion would be of one Person Saved, to a 
Million that is not : that is to say, That there is a Million of 
Reprobates to one that shall be Chosen so as to be Saved." (p. 21.) 

But there is another authority. Let us take the man 
who, more than any other, has been adduced as the cham- 
pion and founder of the Orthodox system, — John Calvin. 
His modern influence we believe is certainly declining, 
but he is still proudly appealed to as an authority by a 
great body of Evangelical Christians. Professor E. D. 
Morris, of Lane Seminary (Presbyterian), in his Inaugu- 
ral Address recently delivered, says: " Presbyterianisni 



10 THE DOOM OF THE 

throughout the world may be said to be in an eminent 
sense doctrinal, — doctrinal because it is Calvinistic." 
What is, then, the doctrine of Calvin on this point? 

calvin's scripture proofs. 

Calvin believed, and did not hesitate to assert, that the 
majority of mankind are eternally lost. He did not fear 
to face the logical consequences of his belief. Where did 
he get his belief from? He professed to get it — and 
certainly thought in all honesty that he got it, from the 
Bible. He claimed that the Bible taught that God had 
elected a few to eternal glory, but that the rest, including 
the heathen, who constitute the vast majority of man- 
kind, were reprobated to eternal damnation. 

In his commentary on Matt. vii. 13, Calvin says : — 

" He expressly says that many run along the broad road, 
because men ruin each other by wicked examples. For whence 
does it arise that each of them knowingly and wilfully rushes 
headlong, but because, while they are ruined in the midst of a 
vast crowd, they do not believe that they are ruined. The small 
number of believers, on the other hand, renders many persons 
careless. It is with difficulty that we are brought to renounce 
the world, and to regulate ourselves and our life by the manners 
of Sifew. We think it strange that we should be forcibly sep- 
arated from the vast majority, as if we were not a part of the 
human race. But though the doctrine of Christ confines and 
hems us in, reduces our life to a narrow road, separates us from 
the crowd, and unites us to a few companions, yet this harsh- 
ness ought not to prevent us from striving to obtain life." 
(JPringWs Translation.) 

In his Harmony, Matt. xxiv. 22, he discusses the ques- 
tion why God determined that " a few should remain out 
of a vast multitude" 

In his comments on Matt. xxiv. 5 he shows that it was 
" through the vengeance of God that more were carried 
away by a foolish credulity than were brought by a right 
faith to obey God." 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 11 

In commenting upon the prayer of Jesus, in John xvii. 
9, he says : — 

" Whence it appears that the whole world. does not belong to 
its Creator ; only that grace snatches a few from the curse and 
wrath of God, and from eternal death, who would otherwise 
perish ; but leaves the world in the ruin to which it has been 
ordained." 

In remarking upon the beautiful words of Christ, 
Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy-laden, 
Calvin's dreadful views are clearly made plain : — 

" And yet all [who accept this invitation] are few in number ; 
because, out of the innumerable multitude of those who are 
perishing, but few perceive that they are perishing." 

In writing against Arminianism Calvin confesses this 
horrible doctrine to its full extent : — 

u I ask again, how has it come to pass that the fall of Adam 
has involved so many nations with their infant children in eternal 
death, and this without remedy, but because such was the will of 
God? Here the tongues that have been so voluble it becomes to 
be mute. It is a dreadful decree, I confess." — (JnstituU lib. in. 
23, 7.) 

OPINIONS OF OTHER COMMENTATORS. 

As Jesus was journeying towards Jerusalem, teaching 
in cities and villages, Luke tells us (xiii. 23) that a certain 
man met him and said unto him, " Lord, are there few 
that be saved ? " It was a curious question, but one very 
natural for a Jew to ask ; for it was a common belief 
among the Jews that they were the elect of God, and 
that the Gentiles were of little importance in his sight. 
Eisenmenger 1 quotes a rabbin who said that "the soul 
of a single Israelite is by itself more precious and dear in 
the sight of the blessed God than all the souls of a whole 
nation ; " and again : " The world was created for the sake 
of the Israelites." "They are the wheat, the other nations 

1 Entdecktes Judenthum, vol. i. pp. 569, 571. 



12 THE DOOM OF THE 

are the chaff." It may have seemed to this Jew a dan- 
gerous doctrine to preach that the Gentiles were equally 
the children of his favor ; as centuries later it seemed to 
the makers of the Westminster Catechism a " detestable 
and pernicious " doctrine that the heathen could be saved. 
But whatever the motive of this question, Jesus did not 
deign to answer it. He advised his questioner, however, 
to strive to enter the strait gate himself, to work out his 
own salvation, instead of cherishing the idea that he 
belonged to a favored class. 

Although Jesus did not satisfy this man's curiosity by 
giving his own views on the subject, it seems a little 
strange that there should have been commentators in all 
ages who have been bold enough to furnish him with an 
opinion. With singular frequency the conclusion has 
been reached that few were to be saved and the vast 
majority eternally lost. Among Calvinistic commen- 
tators this has been the unanimous verdict. That system 
of orthodoxy has permitted no other belief. But this 
view has not been confined to Calvinists. It has been 
held by Arminians as well. As Canon Farrar * says : 
"It is centuries older than Calvinism; it is immensely 
wider than the limits of Calvinistic churches." And 
again in the same book : " The damnation of the vast 
majority of mankind has been the normal teaching of 
theologians in every age since the earliest." (p. 140.) 

The passage in Luke has furnished less ground, perhaps, 
for this conclusion than two that occur in Matthew — 
namely, Matt. xx. 16 and xxii. 14, where Jesus says, 
" Many are called but few chosen." In one case it follows 
the parable of the Laborers, which seems to be directed 
against the doctrine of Jewish exclusiveness ; in the other 
it follows the parable of the Marriage of the King's Son. 
In neither parable is there the slightest reference to 
the doctrine of everlasting punishment. Jesus was re- 

1 Mercy and Judgment, p. 153. 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 13 

buking the people of his own age and country because 
many of them preferred darkness rather than light. He 
showed also that, though many were called into his 
kingdom, but few became eminent in it. It is a monstrous 
assumption to suppose that in these passages he gave a 
revelation concerning the proportion of the human race 
who should be consigned to hell. Yet this is the view 
that has been taken over and over again of these texts 
by Evangelical writers. Matt. vii. 13 has been inter- 
preted in the same way. A few extracts from prominent 
commentators will show how persistently these texts 
have been interpreted with reference to the final destiny 
of the race. 

DIODATI. 

Diodati, in his Annotations (third edition, 1651) on 
Matt. vii. 13, says : — 

" For to come to eternall happiness doe not follow the way of 
pleasures, and ease of the world and the flesh, nor the great num- 
ber and multitude of men: but make choice of the hard and 
laborious profession of the Gospel with its crosse : and joyn thy- 
self to the small sanctified flock of the Church by faith and 
imitation of good men, who are alwaies the smallest number in the 
world." 

On Matt. xxii. 14 he says : — 

11 Because that many who are called do not answer to Gods 
call and that even amongst those also who doe in some sort 
answer, some are rejected, it appears that the eternall election is 
not of all, but of a few." 

On Luke xiii. 23 he says: — 

" Christ according to his wonted custome does not answer 
directly to that curious and unprofitable question: but silently 
avoweth that indeed there are but few." 

ESTIUS. 

Estius, commenting on St. Paul's declaration (1 Tim. 
ii. 4) that " God will have all men to be saved and to come 



14 THE DOOM OF THE 

to the knowledge of the truth," concludes one part of his 
argument by saying, " Since it is certain that all men are 
not saved, and that all men do not believe, but only a few 
out of all," &c. 

And, again, on 2 Pet. iii. 9, he says : " Since, then, 
it is an admitted fact [constet] that all men do not 
come to repentance, but that the majority are lost, it is 
inquired," &c. 

WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY OF DIVINES. 

In the Annotations made upon the Bible by the West- 
minster Assembly of Divines, they say of Matt. xx. 16: — 

" Some come short of that which others, inferior to them in 
the account of the world, obtain, because they are only out- 
wardly called, by the word, but are not from eternity chosen by 
God to eternall life. . . . Though there are many who are exter- 
nally called, yet there are but few that go to heaven. " 

On the similar passage in Matt. xxii. 14, they say : — 

" Because many that are called do not come into God's Church, 
and among those that do come, some are not saved, for want of 
an holy conversation, it appears that few are chosen to eternal 
life." 

MATTHEW HENRY. 

Matthew Henry, on Matt. vii. 13, says : — 

" Those that are going to heaven are but few compared to 
those that are going to hell ; a remnant, a little flock like the 
grape-gleanings of the vintage ; as the eight that were saved in 
the ark." 

In commenting on the question put to Jesus in Luke 
xiii. 23 : " Are there few that be saved? " Matthew Henry 
recognizes the fact that Jesus did not return any direct 
answer to the question. He does not, however, seem 
content to leave the matter where Jesus left it, but pro- 
ceeds to answer the question himself. 

" We have reason to wonder that, of the many to whom the 
word of salvation is sent, there are so few to whom it is indeed a 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 15 

saving word. ... It concerns us all seriously to improve the 
great truth of the fewness of those that are saved. Think how 
many take some pains for salvation, and yet perish because they 
do not take enough ; and you will say that there are few that will 
be saved, and that it highly concerns us to strive. . . . Think of 
the distinguishing day that is coming, and the decisions of that 
day, and you will say there are few that shall be saved, and that we 
are concerned to strive. Think how many that were very con- 
fident they should be saved will be rejected in the day of trial, 
and their confidence will deceive them ; and you will say, there 
are few that shall be saved, and we are all concerned to strive." 

WILLIAM BTTRKITT. 

William Burkitt (vicar of Dedham, Eng., 1712), on 
Matt. xxii. 14, says : — 

" Amongst the Multitude of those that are called by the 
Gospel unto Holiness and Obedience, few. very few compara- 
tively, do obey that Call, and shall be Eternally saved." 

ADAM CLARKE. 

Dr. Adam Clarke, in his commentary on Psalms ix. 
17: — 

" The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations 
that forget God. There are both nations and individuals who, 
though they know God, forget Him, that is, are unmindful of 
Him ; do not acknowledge Him in their designs, ways, and works. 
These are all to be thrust down into helV 

In his commentary on Matt. vii. 14 he says (Italics 
his) : — 

" There are few who find the way to heaven ; fewer yet who 
abide any time in it ; fewer still who walk in it ; and fewest of 
all who persevere unto the end." 

The " wide gate and broad way " he interprets as leading 
into " eternal misery." 

On Matt. xxii. 14 he remarks : — 

" Many are called by the preaching of the gospel unto the 
outward communion of the Church of Christ ; but few, compara- 



16 THE DOOM OF THE 

tively, are chosen to dwell with God in glory, because they do not 
come to the master of the feast for a marriage-garment." 

DODDRIDGE. 

Doddridge on Matt. vii. 14 : — 

' ' Strait is the Gate and rugged and painful the Way which 
leads to eternal Life, and they who find it and with a holy 
Ardency and Resolution press into it, so as to arrive at that 
blessed End, are comparatively few ." 

On Matt. xx. 16 : — 

1 ' Though many are called, and the Messages of Salvation are 
sent to vast Multitudes, even to all the Thousands of Israel, yet 
there are out few chosen. A small remnant only will embrace the 
Gospel so universally offered and so be saved according to the 
Election of Grace, while the rest will be justly disowned by God 
as a Punishment for so obstinate and so envious a Temper." 

On Matt. xxii. 14 : — 

" Though it be a dreadful truth, yet I must say that even the 
greatest part of those to whom the Gospel is offered will either 
openly reject or secretly disobey it. . . . Few are chosen in such 
a sense as finally to partake of its blessings." 

BOOTHEOTD. 

Boothroyd's Family Bible (1824), in a note on Matt. 
xxii. 14 : : — 

" Though many are invited [by the Gospel] yet few chosen, 
— few that will he finally approved." 

HEUBNER. 

Heubner, on Matt. vii. 13 : — 

' ' Oh, how many go on the broad way ! Thus the majority of 
men hasten to ruin, and will ultimately be condemned." 

DR. OWEN. 

Dr. John J. Owen, in his commentary (New York, 
1857) on Matt. xxii. 14: — 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 17 

* ' Many are invited to the blessings and privileges of the 
gospel feast, but comparatively few are real participants of the 
grace of God. This was true of the Jewish nation, in respect 
to whom this parable had primary application. The people in 
general were obdurate and unbelieving, while a few only listened 
to the inspired prophets. Such, also, is the sad fact in respect to 
every nation, even those most highly favored with the light of 
pure Christianity. The masses go down in impenitence to the 
grave, and comparatively few are found in the way that leadeth to 
life:' 

BISHOP OF LINCOLN. 

Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln (1872), 
on Matt. xxii. 14 : — 

''Christ commands to baptize all Nations. ... He proffers 
the Marriage garment to all, and yet how many refuse it and 
prefer their own clothes! Besides, even of those who have the 
wedding garment, some are described as bad. Therefore few are 
chosen. The k\t]to\, or Ecclesia visibilis, is numerous, but how few 
are the chosen ! " 

OLSHATJSEN. 

Olshausen, on Luke xiii. 23, 24, concedes the damnation 
of the majority : — 

11 The Saviour in reply does not say exactly that there were 
but few who should partake of salvation, for, looked at simply 
in itself, the number of the saved is great; it is only relatively, 
and as compared with the lost, that it is small." 

DEAN GOULBTJRN. 

Speaking of the doctrine of the comparative fewness 
of the saved, Dean Goulburn, in an excursus added 
to the second edition of his sermons on Everlasting 
Punishment (1881), says : — 

"It is awfully startling, and ought to be very rousing to 
the energies of our will, to think how legibly this doctrine is 
written on the surface of Holy Scripture, — what pains, if I 
may say so, God has taken to impress it upon us for our 
warning. " (p. 241.) 

2 



18 THE DOOM OF THE 

" Now let it be observed that this doctrine of the fewness of 
the saved, in comparison of the lost, is one so plainly revealed 
that none who accept Holy Scripture as the word of God, can 
dispute it." (p. 251.) 

We have quoted from a line of commentators extend- 
ing from Calvin down to the present day, to show how 
constantly this doctrine has been attributed to the Scrip- 
tures. There have not been lacking eminent scholars who 
have formed a more rational judgment of these passages, 
but the view we have given has been the more common 
one, and has helped to confirm the popular belief on this 
subject. 

OTHER AUTHORITIES. 

This interpretation of the Scripture is frequently con- 
fessed in the works of prominent Evangelical writers. 

Eichard Baxter, in his " Saints' Rest," thus describes 
the people of God : — 

" They are a small part of lost mankind whom God hath from 
eternity predestinated to this Best for the glory of his mercy, 
and given to his Son, to be by him in a special manner re- 
deemed." (Baxter's Saints 1 Rest, ch. viii. 115.) 

Flavel, in his " Method of Grace," says (the italics are 
his): — 

1 1 How great a number of persons are in the state of condemnation ! 
That is a sad complaint of the prophet, — ' Who hath believed 
our report ? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed ? ' 
(Isaiah liii. 1.) Many talk of faith, and many profess it; but 
there are few in the world unto whom the arm of the Lord has 
been revealed in the work of faith with power. It is put among 
the great mysteries that Christ is believed on in the world 
(1 Tim. iii. 16). Oh, what a terrible day will be the day of 
Christ's coming to judgment, when so many millions of unbeliev- 
ers shall be brought to his tribunal to be solemnly sentenced." 

Rev. Jonathan Townsend, M.A., pastor of a church at 
Needham, said : — 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 19 

11 And thus quick are we all hastening into Eternity. Some 
to heaven, a little Company; but Multitudes throng the way to 
Hell, a great Multitude which no Man can number. " {Discourse on 
God's Marvellous Sparing Mercy, 1738, Boston, p. 5.) 

It is competent to quote President Edwards on this 
point : — 

4 'That there are generally but few good men in the world, 
even among them that have those most distinguishing and glo- 
rious advantages for it, which they are favored with that live 
under the Gospel, is evident by that saying of our Lord, from time 
to time in his mouth, Many are called, but few are chosen. And 
if there are but few among these, how few, how very few indeed, 
must persons of this character be, compared with the whole 
world of mankind! The exceeding smallness of the number of 
true saints, compared with the whole world, appears by the 
representations often made of them as distinguished from the 
world." — {Edwards on Original Sin, section vii. ; Works, vol. ii. 
p. 343.) 

Another form in which the doctrine is taught is, that 
the great body of the heathen world — numerically the 
vast majority of the race — are doomed to eternal misery. 

In " The Principles of the Protestant Religion, main- 
tained by the Ministers of the Gospel in Boston," 1690, by 
James Allen, Joshua Moody, Samuel Willard, and Cot- 
ton Mather, the damnation of the heathen is taught as a 
Scripture doctrine : — 

"That there are any Elect among Pagans, who never had 
the gospel offered them, is not only without Scripture warrant, 
but against its Testimony, as hath been agen and agen made 
evident." (pp. 92, 93.) 

In a work entitled " The Doleful State of the Damned," 
by S. Moody of York, Maine, published in 1710, we find 
the tortures of the heathen thus described : — 

11 The Gentile Nations that perished (by Thousands and Mil- 
lions) for lack of Vision, for so many Ages, whiles God (in a way 
of New Covenant Mercy) knew only the Jewish Nation, the 
Seed of Abraham; giving His Word to Jacob, His Statutes 



20 THE DOOAT OF THE 

and Judgments to Israel : All these Nations (I say) whom God 
suffered to walk in their own wayes, will be inraged with Self- 
tormenting Madness, that the Lord should send all His Servants 
the Prophets to them, unto Jacob whom He loved, and make His 
Word in their Mouth, effectual to the Conversion and Salvation of 
so many Thousands of them ; while these Sinners of the Gentiles 
could not hear for want of a Preacher, Rom. x. 14. And the 
Ungospellized Nations, now since Christ came and brake 
down the Partition Wall between Jews and Gentiles (which are 
by far the greatest Part of the World), will have the same 
bitter Pill to Chew, while they Consider how that some in all 
Ages, of one Nation or other, and some of all Nations, in one 
Age or other, are Redeemed and Saved; this will make them 
Lament and Blaspheme, that the Gospel was not sent to their 
Nation, and in their Day on Earth. Now to take the whole 
World of Reprobates together, in whatever Age or Nation they 
lived, that Perish either for lack of Vision, or for Rebelling 
against the Light of Nature and Scripture both ; we may a little 
consider, in a more general Way, how it will Vex and Torment 
all the Damned, while they View and Survey in their Heaven- 
piercing Thoughts, the Place and State of the Glorified; and 
consider, 1. That there was a Possibility of their having been 
all happy, as well as they that are so, or instead of them ; there 
being nothing in the Nature of God or Man against it ; . . . so 
that Thousands of Millions will say, in Hell (and vex them- 
selves forever with such fruitless Wishes) Oh ! That the Gospel 
of Salvation had been sent to us : Oh ! That we had but heard 
the joyful Sound : Oh ! That we had Lived in such Times and 
Places as were blessed with Sabbaths, Ministers, and Bibles. 
And ten thousand Times ten Thousand, Oh! That the Gospel 
had been made effectual to us." {The Doleful State of the 
Damned, Doctrine II. p. 47.) 

Rev. Nathanael Emmons, D.D., was one of the most 
eminent of Orthodox theologians. His name needs only 
to be mentioned to be recognized and honored as one 
of Orthodoxy's representative champions. His writings 
have had a wide circulation and influence. The writer 
possesses an edition of the Works of Dr. Emmons, with 
an interesting Memoir by Prof. Edwards A. Park. It 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 21 

is not the work of a Latin Father ; it bears the imprint 
of the Congregational Board of Publication, 1860. In 
the second volume of that work, Dr. Emmons has a ser- 
mon entitled " Sins without Law deserve Punishment," 
in which he gives Scripture evidence to show that the 
heathen (constituting the vast majority of mankind) shall 
finally perish : — 

1 ' The design of this discourse is to show : — 
I. That the heathen are without law. 
II. That they sin without law. And 
III. That they must perish without law." (vol. ii. p. 663.) 

u Though the heathen sin without law, yet their sin deserves 
eternal destruction." (lb. p. 668.) 

" Though God has never forbidden the heathen to do things 
worthy of death, yet since they have done things worthy of 
death, he has a right to make them suffer eternal death, the 
proper wages of sin." (lb. p. 639.) 

" God has told us in 7iis ivord, that the heathen, who sin without 
law, shall perish without law. God might, if he had pleased, 
have saved the heathen, notwithstanding their desert of eternal 
destruction ; but he has let us know in his word that he deter- 
mines to cast them off forever. He has already caused many 
of them to perish. 

" The men of Sodom and Gomorrah were heathen, and them, 
we are told, he has ' set forth for an example, suffering the 
vengeance of eternal fire.' David says: ' The wicked shall be 
turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.' And he 
prays for the destruction of the heathen: 'Thou, therefore, O 
Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel, awake to visit all the 
heathen.' And again he prays: t Pour out thy wrath upon the 
heathen that have not known thee, and upon the kingdoms that 
have not called upon thy name.' 

11 More passages might be quoted, and more things said upon 
this head, but it is needless to enlarge. The will of God 
respecting the state of the heathen seems to be clearly and fully 
revealed in his word.'' 1 (lb. p. 669.) 

Rev. Enoch Pond will be recognized as another eminent 
Orthodox authority. In a course of Missionary Discourses, 



22 THE DOOM OF THE 

given at Ward, Mass., and published in 1824, we find one 
on Romans vi. 21: "The end of those things is death," 
in which he says : — 

" We have, therefore, in the text this affecting truth : the end 
of heathenism is eternal death. Or, in other words, the great body 
of those who live and die heathen must finally perish.'''' (p. 221.) 

i ' Like all unpardoned sinners, they are ' condemned already, ' 
and are under sentence of eternal punishment. This sentence 
cannot be remitted without repentance and reformation. We 
find no intimations in the Scriptures that God will forgive any, 
even heathens, without repentance ; but everywhere the plainest 
intimations to the contrary." (p, 225.) 

" The conclusion, therefore, is irresistible, that the great body 
of the heathen are not delivered from the wages of sin, but are 
descending, in fearful multitudes, down to the chambers of 
eternal death." (p. 228.) 

"It is submitted, my brethren, after what has been said, 
whether the proposition, announced at the commencement of 
this discourse, has not been immovably established, — that the 
end of heathenism is eternal death ; or that the great body of those 
who live and die heathens must i go away into everlasting punish- 
ment: " (p. 232.) 

Dr. Pond adduces " numerous passages of Scripture in 
which the heathen are represented as exposed to perish 
forever." The list is too long to republish. 

These quotations from acknowledged Orthodox authori- 
ties might be easily multiplied ; but we have given enough 
to show how Orthodoxy has interpreted the Bible on these 
points, and how badly that collection of books has fared 
at its hands. What better argument than such beliefs as 
these can we present that Orthodoxy needs to revise its 
estimate of the Bible? What better evidence to show 
that the Scriptures had better be rationally interpreted, 
or rationally abandoned ? 

Undoubtedly the Scriptures do teach, in the various 
texts that have been quoted, that comparatively few attain 
the higher blessedness, — the more abundant life, to which 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 23 

Jesus called men, — compared with the great multitude 
who take a broader and easier road. But the assumption 
is unwarranted that these passages refer to everlasting 
punishment. 

DR. EZRA ABBOT'S VIEW. 

In a note on one of the most frequently quoted of 
these passages, that of Matt. xxii. 14, " Many are called 
but few chosen," Prof. Ezra Abbot, of the Cambridge 
Divinity School, after quoting, as an instance of intelli- 
gent Orthodox interpretation, Prof. Bernhard Weiss's 
exposition of this passage, 1 says : — 

" 1 would only add that, in this parable and elsewhere, Jesus 
is not considering the question of -probation after death,' — 
whether those who depart from this life without having become 
his followers, or even in a state of hostility to his religion, may 
or may not, in the ages to come, be brought into a better 
spiritual condition ; still less is he teaching any doctrine about 
election and reprobation in the Calvinistic sense, and the num- 
ber of the finally saved. The present parable describes his 
rejection by the great body of the Jews ; and also teaches that 
of those (Jews or Gentiles) who might profess to be his followers 
many would not be truly such, and therefore could not share the 
blessings which belonged to his kingdom. When persecution 
should test the faith of his disciples, many would fall away; 
nay, < the love of the many,' of the great majority, * would 
become cold ' (Matt. xxiv. 10, 12). Many would seek to enter 
the kingdom, or to partake of the great Messianic banquet, but 
would not be able (Luke xiii. 24), from non-fulfilment of the 
essential conditions, which were very different from what they 
were conceived to be by the great body of the Jews. 

" In Matt. vii. 13, 14, Jesus teaches that the path that leads 
to life is strait and narrow; i.e., that true religion requires great 
self-denial and self-sacrifice, such as the vast majority of men 

1 Weiss, Das Matthausevangelium and seine Lucas-Par -allelen erklart 
("The Gospel of Matthew and its Parallels in Luke Explained "), 
Halle, 1875, p. 472. Compare his " Biblical Theology," § 30, d, vol. i. 
p. 137, English translation. 



24 THE DOOM OF THE 

shrink from, so that those who walk in this narrow path are 
comparatively few. Everybody knows that this was the state 
of the Jewish and the heathen world when Jesus uttered these 
words, and that it is to a very large extent the state of the world 
now, The questions whether, or how, or when, those who are 
in the road to destruction can turn round and change their 
course, are not here considered. To assume that Christ's 
language teaches that the spiritual state in which a man leaves 
this world is irreversible, and that the great majority of men, 
or all men, may not ultimately become his followers, is to thrust 
into the passage what is not there. 

" The prevalent false view of this and many other passages 
is due in part to that misinterpretation of the language of Jesus 
which applies such terms as life, eternal life, salvation, the 
kingdom of heaven, etc., on the one hand, and death, destruc- 
tion, hell, damnation (or condemnation), on the other, mainly 
to the rewards and punishments of another world, and con- 
ceives of these as more or less arbitrary, and not, essentially, 
the natural and necessary results of the observance or vio- 
lation of spiritual laws. It is not recognized that these 
terms in their essential meaning, as used by Jesus, describe not 
external conditions, but states of the soul; that ' he who listens 
to the word of Jesus and believes in Him that sent him hath 
eternal life; and cometh not into condemnation, but hath passed 
out of death into life.' The pictorial, dramatic, parabolic 
language in which Jesus enforces the fact of retribution, and 
illustrates the conditions of admission into his kingdom, is taken 
in a gross sense, utterly foreign from the spirit of his religion." 
{Christian Register, Boston, Feb. 22, 1883.) 

But whatever view may be taken of the Scripture 
teachings on this point, humanity is rapidly reaching a 
point of development when it will refuse to receive as 
authoritative any doctrine which affronts the affections, 
outrages the moral sense, and blasphemes the name of the 
Most High. 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND, 25 



II. 



The Damnation of the Majority taught by 
Evangelical Creeds. 

It is claimed by some that the only fair way in an 
examination of this kind is not to take individual inter- 
pretations of Scripture, or individual utterances on the 
point at issue, but to appeal to the Evangelical Creeds. 
Thus Rev. Dr. Withrow, of Boston, in the discussion 
which has given rise to this book, said : " Evangelical 
creeds are the constitutional beliefs of Christendom. 
These great standards of Orthodox belief contain the 
body of Evangelical Faith, founded on the Word of God. 
It would be in order for any one to adduce from the 
Westminster Confession of Faith, from the Thirty-nine 
Articles, or the Saybrook or the Andover Creed, a dis- 
proof of my statement, that ' no evangelical creed in 
Christendom teaches that the vast majority of the human 
race are to be the victims of endless woe.' . . . Ortho- 
doxy does not hold itself responsible for all the views 
of its several adherents. Its beliefs are to be judged 
by its standards." {Christian Register, Jan. 4, 1883, 
p. 5.) 

The position assumed by Dr. Withrow is perfectly logi- 
cal. It is consistent and honorable. Denominations that 
have standards to which they appeal should be judged by 
them. Let us see, then, what the great evangelical 
standards teach concerning this doctrine. We will not 
pause here to ask the question how far individuals who 
still profess these creeds have secretly or openly repu- 
diated them. We are told that we must not judge 
evangelical bodies by individual opinions. The appeal 
has been made to the standards ; to the standards let 
us go. 



26 THE DOOM OF THE 

We readily grant that the oldest creed known to 
Christendom, the Apostles' Creed, does not contain the 
doctrine ; but it is unmistakably taught in the mediaeval 
creeds of the Church, and most conspicuously in the creeds 
of that branch of the Christian Church to which Dr. 
Withrow belongs, — Calvinistic Orthodoxy. As our argu- 
ment concerns only the Protestant belief on this subject, 
we omit reference to the Roman Catholic creeds, and, 
beginning with the Protestant Reformation, confine our- 
selves to those creeds which are still the authoritative 
standards of a large portion of the Evangelical Church. 
We do not say that the doctrine of the doom of the 
majority is stated in so many words, but we contend that 
a creed is responsible, not merely for its definitions, but 
for the inevitable conclusions which must be drawn from 
them. We shall show, therefore, that the principal creeds 
teach : 

1. The doctrine of the eternal damnation of the ma- 
jority of infants of the race. 

2. The doctrine of the eternal damnation of the great 
body of the heathen world, constituting the vast majority 
of the adult portion of mankind. 

1, Infant Damnation in the Creeds. 

1. The doctrine of the damnation of the majority of 
infants is taught in creeds which make sanation depend- 
ent on baptism. 

This was the doctrine of Augustine. It is the doctrine 
of the Roman Catholic Church to-day. It is also taught in 

THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION. 

That Confession, adopted in 1530, says : — 
* ' Art. ix. Of Baptism they teach that it is necessary to salva- 
tion. . . . They condemn the Anabaptists, who allow not the 
baptism of children, and affirm that children are saved without 
baptism." 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 27 

Luther, in an Exposition of Psalm xxix., in extending 
comfort to Christian mothers, based on the invitation of 
Jesus, says : — 

" We say that children are conceived and born in sin, and 
cannot be saved without Christ, to whom we bring them in 
baptism . . . for without Christ is there no salvation. There- 
fore Turkish and Jewish children are not saved, since they are 
not brought to Christ." 

Melanchthon, who wrote the Augsburg Confession, also 
held the same views : — 

" The promise of grace pertains to children who are within the 
Church. It is certain that out of the Church, — that is, among 
those upon whom the name of God is not invoked through 
baptism, and who are without the Gospel, — there is no remission 
of sins and participation in eternal life." (Melanchthonis Oper., 
part. 1. de baptism, infantum, fol. 237 seq.) 

He classes them with blasphemous Jews, Mahometans, 
and the enemies of Christ. 

Again he says : — 

"It is not to be asserted that salvation pertains to infants 
outside of the Church, as without any evidence the Anabaptists 
furiously contend." 

And again : — 

" This hypothesis is to be held, that infants who are within 
the Church, upon whom the name of Christ has been invoked, 
are received into grace; not Turks nor Jews." 

Zerneke, 1 the author of a curious book on the " State 
of Infants of Heathen Parents, who die in Infancy," after 
quoting these passages from Melanchthon, says : — 

1 Dissertatio Theologica de Statu Infantium a Gentilibus progenitorum, 
cum in Infantia decedunt. Jena, 1733. Third edition, — in the library 
of Dr. Ezra Abbot, Cambridge, Mass. We find on the titlepage the 
names of Dr. Joannes Fecht as prceses, and Jacobus Henricus Zerneke 
as respondent ; but it appears from p. 96 that Zerneke is the substantial 
author, though he was assisted by Fecht, Professor of Theology and 
Superintendent at Rostock. 



28 THE DOOM OF THE 

" From these it is easily apparent in what way the words of 
the Apology of the Augsburg Confession are to be understood, 
since any one is the best interpreter of his own words." 

The Augsburg Confession has always been, and still is, 
the authoritative standard of the Lutheran Church. In 
the discussion on "The Revision of Creeds" in the North 
American Review for February, 1883, Rev. Dr. G. F. 
Krotel, speaking for the Lutheran Church in America, says : 
" All parts of the Lutheran Church in this country profess 
to receive the fundamental creed of Lutheranism, the 
Augsburg Confession ex animo" He tells us that " the 
Lutheran Church, instead of going away from her stand- 
ards, is really coming back to them." 

Rev. Dr. C. P. Krauth, the most prominent advocate of 
Lutheranism in this country, in his principal work, " The 
Conservative Reformation," argues that Baptism " as the 
ordinary channel of Regeneration, places infant salvation 
on the securest ground." In his "Review of Dr. Hodge's 
Systematic Theology," p. 22, Dr. Krauth relieves us some- 
what by saying: "As Lutherans we have a clear faith 
resting on a specific covenant in the case of a baptized 
child, and a well-grounded hope resting on an all-embrac- 
ing mercy in the case of an unbaptized child." But this 
is the individual view of Dr. Krauth ; it is not the teaching 
of the Lutheran Standards ; nor, as w r e have seen, was it 
the view of Luther and Melanchthon, the authors of that 
Confession. There is abundant evidence that Lutheran 
ministers and laity still cling to the necessity of water- 
baptism for infant salvation, and, like Roman Catholics, 
would not dare to let their children die without it. 1 

Dr. Philip Schnff, of Union Theological Seminary in 
New York, says : — 

1 See a little book, "Behind the Scenes/' byF. M. Jams, Cincin- 
nati, Ohio, — G. W. Lasher, 1883, — in which confessions are given of 
various ministers who have baptized infants to assure parents of their 
salvation. (Chaps, u. and ix.) 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 29 

" All Orthodox systems which hold to the necessity of water- 
baptism for salvation, lead to the horrible conclusion that all 
unbaptized infants dying in infancy, as well as all the heathen, — 
that is, by far the greatest part of the human race, past and 
present, — are lost forever. " {The Harmony of the Reformed 
Confessions, p. 50.) 

The Church of England, in her baptismal formula, clearly 
teaches the doctrine of baptismal regeneration ; but though 
maintaining that baptized infants are saved, she does not 
say that unbaptized infants are lost. 

2. The doctrine of the damnation of infants taught 
in Calvinistic Creeds. 

In his review of Dr. Hodge's " Systematic Theology," 
that eminent Lutheran scholar and divine, Dr. C. P. 
Krauth, lately deceased, has presented an overwhelming 
amount of testimony concerning " Infant Baptism and 
Infant Salvation in the Calvinistic System." Calvinistic 
Creeds and Calvinistic Fathers have been placed on the 
witness-stand. We have not space to give a tithe of 
the evidence so thoroughly presented ; but, after reading 
it, we cannot escape his conclusion, that " Calvin's theory 
involves the certain damnation of the majority of the 
infants of the race, and does not claim that there is 
distinct evidence, even in the most hopeful case, that 
any particular child is saved." (p. 58.) 

Dr. Philip Schaff, himself a Presbyterian, makes this 
candid admission : — 

"The scholastic Calvinists of the seventeenth century 
mounted the Alpine heights of eternal decrees with intrepid 
courage, and revelled in the reverential contemplation of the 
sovereign majesty of God, which seemed to require the damna- 
tion of the great mass of sinners, including untold millions of 
heathen and infants, for the manifestation of his terrible justice. 
Inside the circle of the elect all was bright and delightful in the 
sunshine of infinite mercy, but outside all was darker than 
. midnight. ' ' ( The Harmony of the Reformed Confessions, p. 47.) 



30 THE DOOM OF THE 



THE SYNOD OF DORT. 



At the Synod of Dort, 1619-1622, this question of 
infant damnation came up. The position of Calvinism is 
unmistakable, that only elect infants are saved. Against 
this view the Arminians protested; and their "Apology" 
shows the doctrine against which Episcopius and others 
remonstrated : — 

" Why shall it be thought absurd or wicked to say that God 
not only wills of his good pleasure to destroy, but also to devote 
to the inner torments of hell, the larger part of the human race, 
many myriads of infants torn from their mothers' breasts ? for 
these are the horrid inferences which the school of Calvin rears 
on those foundations, which consequently the Remonstrants look 
upon with their whole soul full of aversion and abhorrence.' ' 
(Krauth, p. 63.) 

The Arminians say again : — 

" We especially desire to know from this venerable Synod, 
whether it acknowledges as its own doctrine, and the doctrine of 
the Church, particularly what is asserted . . . concerning the 
creation of the larger part of mankind for destruction, the repro- 
bation of infants, even though born of believing parents." 
(Acta Synod., 121; Krauth, p. 58.) 

The Swiss Theologians at Dort say: — 

" That there is an election and reprobation of infants no less than 
of adults, we cannot deny in the face of God who loves and 
hates unborn children." (Acta Synod. Judic. 40. See Krauth, 
p. 15.) 

From the Zurich Consensus between Calvin and the 
Zurich ministers : — 

u We zealously teach that God does not promiscuously exer- 
cise His power on all who receive the Sacraments, but only on 
the elect. He enlightens unto faith none but those whom He 
has foreordained unto life." (Niemeyer, Collect. Conf. 195.) 

From the above it is evident that, according to Cal- 
vinism, non-elect infants cannot be saved by baptism. 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 31 

Molinaeus, 1568-1658, "one of the greatest divines of 
the French Calvinistic Church," defended the decrees of 
the Synod of Dort : — 

"If one were to crush an ant with his foot, no one could 
charge him with injustice, — though the ant never offended him, 
though he did not give life to the ant, though the ant belonged 
to another and no restitution could be made. . . . The offspring 
of the pious and faithful are born with the infection of original 
sin. ... As the eggs of the asp are deservedly crushed, and 
serpents just born are deservedly killed, though they have not 
yet poisoned any one with their bite, so infants are justly 
obnoxious to penalties." (Krauth, p. 66.) 

Again, Molinaaus says : — 

" We dare not promise salvation to any [infant] remaining 
outside Christ's covenant." (Krauth, p. 18.) 

The Bremen Theologians at Dort say : — 
"Believers' infants alone, who die before they reach the age 
in which they can receive instruction, do we suppose to be loved 
of God, and saved of His . . . good pleasure." (Acta Synod., 63.) 

Marckius (quoted by Krauth) says: — 

* ' Xor is it to be doubted that among these reprobated are to 
be referred the infants of unbelievers. . . . God has revealed 
nothing as decreed or to be done for their salvation, and they 
are destitute of the ordinary means of grace. So that we ought 
utterly to reject, not only their salvation, of which Pelagians 
dream, but also the Remonstrant [Arminian] theory that their 
penally is one of privation, without sensation. The terminus to 
which these are predestined is eternal death, destruction, 
damnation." (Krauth, p. 35.) 

THE WESTMINSTER COKFESSION. 

The Westminster Confession and Catechisms, says Dr. 
Philip Schaff, in his " Harmony of the Reformed Confes- 
sions" (p. 11), "present the ablest, the clearest, and the 
fullest statement of the Calvinistic system of doctrine. . . . 
They have been adopted not only by Presbyterians, but 
also, with some modifications, on church polity and the 



32 THE DOOM OF THE 

doctrine of baptism, and with a reservation of greater 
freedom, by the Orthodox Congregationalists and the 
Regular, or Calvinistic Baptists in Great Britain and 
America." 

This Confession of Faith also assumes the damnation of 
unelect infants. 

" Elect Infants dying in infancy are regenerated and saved by 
Christ, through the Spirit who worketh when and where and 
how he pleaseth. So also are all other elect persons who are 
incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the 
word. 

" Others not elected, although they may be called by the 
ministry of the word and may have some common operations of 
the Spirit, yet they never truly come to Christ, and therefore 
cannot be saved.' ' {Westminster Confession, Chap. X. in., iv.) 

The inevitable conclusion from this language is that 
while elect infants are saved, unelect infants are certainly 
lost. Modern Calvinists, repudiating the doctrine of in- 
fant damnation, would like to put a new meaning into 
these words ; they would have us believe that all dying in 
infancy are elect. But such is not the language, and such 
is not the natural meaning, of the Westminster Confes- 
sion. If the writers of it believed that all infants were 
saved, why did they limit the word infants by that word 
elect ? In that Confession we are told again that " every 
sin, both original and actual, . . . doth in its own na- 
ture bring guilt upon the sinner, whereby he is bound 
over to the wrath of God and curse of the law, and so 
made subject to death, with all miseries, spiritual, tem- 
poral, and eternal" ( Westminster Confession, VI. vi.) 

Thus original sin is exposed to the same penalty as 
actual sin, and nothing in the Westminster Confession 
relieves any infants but elect ones from this fate. There 
is not a line in that Confession that teaches that infants 
are saved as a class. As Dr. Krauth says, their salvation 
depends upon " an absolute personal election." 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 33 

This view of the Westminster Confession is confirmed 
by a vast array of testimony from the Calvinistic writers 
of the time, which we could readily present, if it seemed 
necessary ; but perhaps one quotation will be sufficient to 
show how the Westminster Confession was understood by 
the men that made it. Dr. William Twisse was the Pro- 
locutor of the Westminster Assembly of divines. He 
w r as one of the most prominent Calvinists of his day. In 
his greatest work, u The Vindication of the Grace, Power, 
and Providence of God," he says : — 

" Many infants depart from this life in original sin, and con- 
sequently are condemned to eternal death on account of original 
sin alone: therefore, from the sole transgression of Adam, con- 
demnation to eternal death has followed upon many infants ." 
(Vindicice, i. 48.) 

This view of Twisse was very extensively held among 
Calvinists, not only in England, but in this country. We 
have a rough poetic monument of its prevalence in this 
country in " The Day of Doom," by Rev. Michael Wig- 
glesworth, A. M., " teacher of the Church at Maiden, in 
New England, 1662." This is " a poetical description of 
the great and last Judgment." Among the great number 
of those who appear before the judgment-seat are the 
reprobate infants, who piteously plead for mercy: — 

" Then to the Bar all they drew near 

Who died in infancy, 
And never had or good or bad 

effected pers'nally; 
But from the womb unto the tomb 

were straightway carried, 
(Or at the least ere they transgress' d) 

Who thus began to plead : 

" * If for our own transgressi-on 
or disobedience, 
We here did stand at thy left hand, 
just were the Recompense; 
3 



34 THE DOOM OF THE 

But Adam's guilt our souls hath spilt, 
his fault is charg'd upou us ; 

And that alone hath overthrown 
and utterly undone us. 

" * Not we, but he ate of the Tree, 

whose fruit was interdicted ; 
Yet on us all of his sad Fall 

the punishment 's inflicted. 
How could we sin that had not been, 

or how is his sin our, 
Without consent, which to prevent 

we never had the pow'r? 

" l O great Creator why was our Nature 

depraved and forlorn? 
Why so defiPd, and made so vil'd, 

whilst we were yet unborn? 
If it be just, and needs we must 

transgressors reckon'd be, 
Thy Mercy, Lord, to us afford, 

which sinners hath set free. 

" * Behold we see Adam set free, 

and sav'd from his trespass, 
Whose sinful Fall hath split [spilt ?] us all, 

and brought us to this pass. 
Canst thou deny us once to try, 

or Grace to us to tender, 
When he finds grace before thy face, 

who was the chief offender? ' 

u Then answered the Judge most dread: 

4 God doth such doom forbid, 
That men should die eternally 

for what they never did. 
But what you call old Adam's Fall, 

and only his Trespass, 
You call amiss to call it his; 

both his and yours it was. 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 35 

il ' He was design 'd of all Mankind 

to be a public Head ; 
A common Root, whence all should shoot, 

and stood in all their stead. 
He stood and fell, did ill or well, 

not for himself alone, 
But for you all, who now his Fall 

and trespass would disown. 

" ' If he had stood, then all his brood 

had been established 
In God's true love never to move, 

nor once awry to tread ; 
Then all his Race my Father's Grace 

should have enjoy 'd for ever, 
And wicked Sprites by subtile sleights 

could them have harmed never. 

11 ' Would you have griev'd to have receiv'd 

through Adam so much good ; 
As had been your for evermore, 

if he at first had stood ? 
Would you have said, " We ne'er obeyed 

nor did thy laws regard ; 
It ill befits with benefits, 

us, Lord, to so reward ?" 

" * Since then to share in his welfare, 

you could have been content, 
You may with reason share in his treason, 

and in the punishment. 
Hence you were born in state forlorn, 

with Natures so depraved; 
Death was your due because that you 

had thus yourselves behaved. 

11 ' You think " If we had been as he 
whom God did so be trust, 
We to our cost would ne'er have lost 
all for a paltry lust. ' ' 



36 THE DOOM OF THE 

Had you been made in Adam's stead, 
you would like things have wrought, 

And so into the self -same woe, 
yourselves and yours have brought. 

" ' I may deny you once to try, 

or Grace to you to tender, 
Though he finds Grace before my face 

who was the chief offender ; 
Else should my Grace cease to be Grace, 

for it would not be free, 
If to release whom I should please 

1 have no liberty. 

" ' If upon one what 's due to none 

I frankly shall bestow , 
And on the rest shall not think best 

compassion's skirt to throw, 
Whom injure I? will you envy 

and grudge at others' weal ? 
Or me accuse, who do refuse 

yourselves to help and heal ? 

" ' Am I alone of what 's my own, 

no Master or no Lord ? 
And if I am, how can you claim 

what I to some afford ? 
Will you demand Grace at my hand, 

and challenge what is mine ? 
Will you teach me whom to set free, 

and thus my Grace confine ? 

" 'You sinners are, and such a share 

as sinners, may expect ; 
Such you shall have, for I do save 

none but mine own Elect. 
Yet to compare your sin with their 

who liv'd a longer time, 
I do confess yours is much less, 

though every sin 's a crime. 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 37 

u ' A crime it is, therefore in bliss 
you may not hope to dwell ; 
But unto you I shall allow 
the easiest room in Hell. ' ' ' 

Wigglesworth's views were thus in entire harmony with 
the Westminster Confession and with those of Twisse, its 
prolocutor, Calvin, and others whom we have quoted. 
The popularity of his poem was very great. " The first 
edition," says John Ward Dean, 1 " consisting of eighteen 
hundred copies, was sold, with some profit to the author, 
within a year ; " which, considering the population and 
wealth of New England at that time, shows almost as 
remarkable a popularity as that of " Uncle Tom's Cabin." 

Professor Tyler, in his "History of American Litera- 
ture," says : 2 " This great poem, which, with entire uncon- 
sciousness, attributes to the Divine Being a character the 
most execrable and loathsome to be met with, perhaps, in 
any literature, Christian or Pagan, had for a hundred 
years a popularity far exceeding that of any other work, 
in prose or verse, produced in America before the Revo- 
lution. . . . No narrative of our intellectual history dur- 
ing the colonial days can justly fail to record the enormous 
influence of this terrible poem during all those times. 
Not only was it largely circulated in the form of a book, 
but it was hawked about the country in broadsides as a 
popular ballad. ... Its pages were assigned in course to 
little children to be learned by heart along with the cate- 
chism ; as late as the present century, there were in New 
England many aged persons who were able to repeat the 
whole poem ; for more than a hundred years after its first 
publication it was, beyond question, the one supreme poem 
of Puritan New England." 

1 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, for April, 
1863. 

2 History of American Literature, vol. ii. p. 34. 



38 THE DOOM OF THE 

" His work," says Francis Jenks, 1 " fairly represents the 
prevailing theology of New England at the time it was 
written, and which Mather thought might ' perhaps find 
our children till the Day itself arrives.' " Happily that 
day has not arrived, and the children of Mather have 
disowned so much of the doctrine as relates to the dam- 
nation of infants. 

The Cumberland Presbyterian Church of the United 
States, which was organized in 1810, adopted in 1813 a 
semi-Arminian revision of the Westminster Confession. 
Instead of saying, "Elect infants dying in infancy are 
regenerated and saved," they changed the language to 
all infants. The great body of the Presbyterian Church 
in America, however, though they have individually given 
up the belief in infant damnation, still allow this frightful 
doctrine to disfigure their standards. Yet Dr. Withrow 
tells us that Orthodoxy must be judged " by its standards." 
No modern Presbyterian clergyman that we know of 
teaches the doctrine of infant damnation, but every Pres- 
byterian minister is obliged to subscribe to a Confession 
which teaches it. If our Calvinistic brethren deny the 
doctrine of infant damnation, let them blot it out of their 
standards. Either their standards are condemned by their 
present belief, or their present belief is condemned by 
their standards. 

2. The Damnation of Heathen in the Creeds* 

Not only is the damnation of unelect infants and unbap- 
tized infants taught in the creeds, but the damnation of the 
unconverted heathen, the vast majority of the adult por- 
tion of mankind, is taught with even more emphasis and 
uniformity. 

THE SAXON VISITATION ARTICLES. 

In the Saxon Articles of Visitation, prepared by the 
Lutherans in 1592 against the Calvinists, the Calvinists 

1 Christian Examiner, November, 1828. 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 39 

were charged with holding, among others, the following 
errors : — 

" That God created tie greater part of mankind for eternal dam- 
nation, and wills not that the greater part should be converted 
and live." (Art. iv. On Predestination, 2.) 

The Calvinists denied that they taught that God created 
the greater part of mankind for eternal damnation, but 
did not deny that such was their destiny, nor did the 
Lutherans, generally. 

THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 

In the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, 
both in the English Edition of 1571 and the American 
Revision of 1801, we find salvation thus conditioned : — 

" Art. xviii. They also are to be accursed that presume 
to say that every man shall be saved by the Law or Sect which 
he professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according to 
that Law and the light of Nature. For Holy Scripture doth set 
out unto us only the Name of Jesus Christ, whereby men must 
be saved." 

This article is liberally interpreted by the Church of 
England to-day, although it undoubtedly had its origin in 
the same narrow view of salvation which is apparent in 
the extracts from the creeds that follow. Bishop Burnet, 
in his celebrated Exposition of the Articles, 1699, strug- 
gles with the difficulties and mysteries of this article as it 
concerns the heathen, and shows a charity of heart and 
breadth of mind which might be commended to many in 
our own day : — 

11 As for them whom God has left in Darkness, they are cer- 
tainly out of the Covenant, out of those Promises and Declarations 
that are made in it. So that they have no Federal Right to be 
saved, neither can we affirm that they shall be saved : But on 
the other hand, they are not under those positive denunciations, 
because they were never made to them : Therefore since God has 
not declared that they shall be damned, no more ought we to 
take upon us to damn them. 



40 THE DOOM OF THE 

" Instead of stretching the Severity of Justice by an Inference, 
we may rather venture to stretch the Mercy of God, since that 
is the Attribute which of all others is the most Magnificently 
spoken of in the Scriptures: So that we ought to think of it in 
the largest and most comprehensive manner. But indeed the 
most proper way is, for us to stop where the Revelation of God 
stops: And not to be wise beyond what is written ; but to leave 
the secrets of God as Mysteries, too far above us to Examine, or 
to sound their depth." (Exposition of the Thirty- Nine Articles. 
4th ed., p. 169.) 

THE SCOTCH CONFESSION OF FAITH. 

The Scotch Confession of Faith adopted in 1560 is 
very explicit in excluding the heathen : — 

" We utterly abhorre the blasphemie of them that affirme, 
that men quhilk live according to equitie and justice sal be saved, 
quhat Religioun that ever they have professed. For as without 
Christ Jesus there is nouther life nor salvation ; so sal there nane 
be participant hereof, bot sik as the Father hes given unto his 
Sonne Christ Jesus, and they that in time cum unto him, 
avowe his doctrine, and beleeve into him, we comprehend the 
children with the faithfull parentes." (Art. xvi.) 

THE IRISH ARTICLES OF RELIGION (1615). 

" Art. xxxi. They are to be condemned that presume to 
say that every man shall be saved by the law or sect which he 
professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according 
to that law and the light of nature. For holy Scripture doth 
set out unto us only the name of Jesus Christ whereby men 
must be saved. 

" Art. xxxn. None can come unto Christ unless it be 
given unto him, and unless the Father draw him. And all men 
are not so drawn by the Father that they may come unto the 
Son. Neither is there such a sufficient measure of grace vouch- 
safed unto every man, whereby he is enabled to come unto 
everlasting life." 

THE LAMBETH ARTICLES. 

This limitation in the Irish Articles was a reiteration 
of the same doctrine seen in the Lambeth Articles, a 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 41 

Calvinistic appendix to the Thirty-Nine Articles, com- 
posed in 1595: — 

" i. God from eternity hath predestinated certain men nnto 
life ; certain men he hath reprobated." 

" in. There is predetermined a certain number of the pre- 
destinate which can neither be augmented nor diminished. 

11 iv. Those who are not predestinated to salvation shall be 
necessarily damned for their sins." 

11 vn. Saving grace is not given, is not granted, is not com- 
municated to all men, by which they may be saved if they 
will. 

" vin. No man can come unto Christ unless it shall be given 
unto him, and unless the Father shall draw him ; and all men 
are not drawn by the Father, that they may come to the Son. 

" ix. It is not in the will or power of every one to be 
saved. ' y 

THE CANONS OF DORT. 

The Canons of the Synod of Dort were adopted in 
1618 and 1619. They are very strong in their definitions 
of election, and in their denial of salvation through the 
light of nature. These Canons are still in force in the 
Reformed (Dutch) Church in America, and the text from 
which we quote is taken from the " Constitution of the 
Reformed Church in America," published in New York 
(Schaff, Creeds, &c, vol. iii. p. 581) : — 

" First head of Doctrine, art. vii. Election is the un- 
changeable purpose of God, whereby, before the foundation of 
the world, he hath, out of mere grace, according to the sovereign 
good pleasure of his own will, chosen, from the whole human 
race, which had fallen through their own fault from their primi- 
tive state of rectitude into sin and destruction, a certain number 
of persons to redemption in Christ." 

" Art. x. ... He was pleased, out of the common mass of 
sinners, to adopt some certain persons as a peculiar people to 
himself. . . . " 

Under the third and fourth heads of doctrine it effect- 
ually excludes the heathen : — 



42 THE DOOM OF THE 

" Art. iv. There remain, however, in man since the fall, 
the glimmerings of natural light, whereby he retains some 
knowledge of God, of natural things, and of the difference 
between good and evil, and discovers some regard for virtue, 
good order in society, and for maintaining an orderly external 
deportment. But so far is this light of nature from being 
sufficient to bring him to a saving knowledge of God and to 
true conversion, that he is incapable of using it aright, even in 
things natural and civil. Nay, farther, this light, such as it is, 
man in various ways renders wholly polluted, and holds it [back] 
in unrighteousness, by which he becomes inexcusable before 
God." 

THE WESTMINSTER CONFESSION. 

But we have been especially challenged to quote the 
Westminster Confession in proof of the doctrine of the 
doom of the majority, — and strangely enough, by one who 
has signed the creed, and who professes to accept it. We 
have already quoted that confession to show that, histori- 
cally interpreted, it teaches infant damnation. Its belief 
in the damnation of the heathen is positive, and unam- 
biguous. 

" Others, not elected, although they may be called by the min- 
istry of the Word, and may have some common operations of 
the Spirit ; yet they never truly come unto Christ, and therefore 
cannot be saved : much less can men, not professing the Christian 
religion, be saved in any other way whatsoever, be they never 
so diligent to frame their lives according to the light of nature 
and the law of that religion they do profess ; and to assert and 
maintain that they may is very pernicious and to be detested" 
(Confession, X. iv.) 

In the Westminster Assembly's "Larger Catechism/' 
question 60, the heathen are again condemned : — 

" Q. 60. Can they who have never heard the gospel, and so 
know not Jesus Christ, nor believe in him, be saved by their 
living according to the light of nature? 

"A. They who, having never heard the gospel, know not 
Jesus Christ, and believe not in him, cannot be saved, be they 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 43 

never so diligent to frame their lives according to the light of 
nature or the law of that religion which they profess; neither is 
there salvation in any other, but in Christ alone, who is the 
Saviour only of his body, the Church.' ' 

We are further told that — 

4 1 All that hear the Gospel and live in the visible Church are 
not saved; but only they who are true members of the Church 
invisible. . . . The invisible Church is the whole number of the 
elect." (Q. 61, 64.) 

The Westminster Confession and Catechism thus teach : 
(1) that only elect infants are saved; (2) that only apart 
of the visible Church is saved ; (3) that the heathen who 
never heard the gospel are damned. It requires no 
arithmetic to deduce from the Westminster Catechism 
the doctrine of the "vast majority of the lost." On the 
contrary, it requires some new and miraculous system of 
arithmetic to deduce from it anything else. 

The older and regular Congregational creeds agree 
substantially with the Westminster Confession on doctri- 
nal points. 

THE SAYOY DECLARATION. 

The Savoy Declaration was adopted by the Elders and 
Messengers of the English Congregational Churches in 
1658. It is simply the Westminster Creed corrected to 
suit the Congregational polity, and excludes the heathen 
from salvation : — 

44 This promise of Christ, and salvation by him, is revealed 
only in and by the Word of God ; neither do the works of crea- 
tion or providence, with the light of nature, make discovery of 
Christ, or of grace by him, so much as in a general or obscure 
way ; much less that men, destitute of the revelation of him by 
the promise or gospel, should be enabled thereby to attain 
saving faith or repentance." (Chap. XX. n.) 

The Savoy Declaration adds some words to the tenth 
chapter of the Westminster Confession, which bolt the 
door against the heathen more effectually than ever : — 



44 THE DOOM OF THE 

" Others not elected, although they may be called by the min- 
istry of the Word, and may have some common operations of 
the Spirit, yet not being effectually drawn by the Father, they 
neither do nor can come unto Christ, and therefore cannot be 
saved : much less can men, not professing the Christian religion 
be saved in any other way whatsoever, be they never so diligent 
to frame their lives according to the light of nature and the law 
of that religion they do profess; and to assert and maintain 
that they may is very pernicious and to be detested." 

AMERICAN CONGREGATIONAL CREEDS. 

The "Elders and Messengers of the churches assembled 
in the Synod at Cambridge, in New England," in June, 
1648, declare the Westminster Confession, published the 
previous year, " to be very holy, orthodox, and judicious in 
all matters of faith ; and do therefore freely and fully con- 
sent thereunto for the substance thereof." Finding the 
Confession doctrinally sufficient, the Cambridge Synod 
confined itself to an exposition of the Congregational 
polity. 

The Synod of New England Congregational Churches, 
held at Boston in 1680, accepted and republished the 
Savoy revision of the Westminster Confession ; passages 
from which, excluding the heathen from salvation, we 
have quoted above. 

The Saybrook Platform, adopted by the Elders and 
Messengers of the churches in the Colony of Connecticut, 
assembled at Saybrook, September 9, 1708, recognizes and 
endorses the Westminster, Boston, and Savoy confessions 
as its doctrinal foundation, and thus reasserts the damna- 
tion of the heathen. 

THE PLYMOUTH DECLARATION. 

In the doctrinal agitation which arose with the Unita- 
rian controversy, about thirty-four of the oldest churches 
in New England — comprising the greater part of the 
churches whose elders and messengers adopted the Boston 



MAJORITY OF MANKIXD. 45 

Confession — entirely renounced the Calvinistic system, 
and appealed in a larger and more generous way to New 
Testament Christianity, as superior to Confessional inter- 
pretations. But the Orthodox part of the Congregational 
body, as late as 1865 ? in its Declaration of Faith adopted 
at Plymouth, Mass., freely and gratefully accepted the 
"dark and awful" doctrines embodied in the Boston 
Confession of 1680, which was a republication of the 
horrors of the Savoy and Westminster confessions quoted 
above : — 

1 ' Standing by the rock where the Pilgrims set foot upon these 
shores, upon the spot where they worshipped God, and among 
the graves of the early generations, we, Elders and Messengers of 
the Congregational Churches of the United States in National 
Council assembled, — like them acknowledging no rule of faith 
but the Word of God, — do now declare our adherence to the 
faith and order of the apostolic and primitive churches held by 
our fathers, and substantially as embodied in the confessions 
and platforms which our Synods of 1648 and 1680 set forth or 
reaffirmed. We declare that the experience of the nearly two 
and a half centuries which have elapsed since the memorable 
day when our sires founded here a Christian Commonwealth, 
with all the development of new forms of error since their 
times, has only deepened our confidence in the faith and polity 
of those fathers. We bless God for the inheritance of these doc- 
irines. We invoke the help of the Divine Redeemer that, 
through the presence of the promised Comforter, he will enable 
us to transmit them in purity to our children." 

Blessing God for the inheritance of a doctrine which 
damns the vast majority of the human race to endless 
woe ! Praying that the Divine Redeemer would enable 
them to transmit these horrors in purity to their children ! 
There are many things to be profoundly grateful for in 
the old Puritan heritage, but these are not a part of them. 
We may forgive the men of two hundred years ago for 
believing in mediaeval superstitions; but what shall we 
say of those who, in all the light of our own day, reaffirm 



46 THE DOOM OF THE 

them? Their Elders and Messengers of 1865 might have 
found a better occasion for gratitude in the joyous con- 
sciousness that they were at liberty to correct the errors 
of their fathers, and to give to the Evangelical conception 
of Christianity a new breadth, by affirming those spiritual 
truths of which the Westminster Confession is but a 
ghastly parody. It is a pleasure, however, to record the 
increased influence which the Liberal minority in the 
Orthodox Congregational body has achieved, an influence 
strong enough to render the passage of the Burial Hill 
Declaration inexpedient to-day, if not impracticable. 

CREED OF THE PARK STREET CHURCH. 

Assent to the old creeds, or abridgments of them, 
which contain the doctrines we arraign, is still required, 
however, in many of the most representative Orthodox 
churches. The following are the articles which the pastor 
and deacons of Park Street Church, Boston, are required 
to sign : — 

" First. We believe that the Scriptures of the Old and New 
Testament are the Word of God, and the only perfect rule of 
Christian faith and practice. 

" Second. We profess our decided attachment to that system 
of the Christian religion which is distinguishingly denominated 
Evangelical ; more particularly to those doctrines, which in a 
proper sense, are styled the Doctrines of Grace, viz: ' That there 
is one and but one living and true God, subsisting in three per- 
sons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and that 
these Three are the one God, the same in substance, equal in 
power and glory ; that God from all eternity, according to the 
counsel of His own will, and for His own glory, foreordained 
whatsoever comes to pass ; that God in His most holy, wise, and 
powerful providence preserves and governs all His creatures 
and all their actions ; that, by the Fall, all mankind lost com- 
munion with God, are under His wrath and curse, and liable to 
all the miseries of this life, to death itself, and to the pains of 
hell forever; that God out of His mere good pleasure, from all 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 47 

eternity elected some to everlasting life, entered into a covenant 
of grace, to deliver them from a state of sin and misery, and 
introduce them into a state of salvation by a Redeemer ; that 
this Redeemer is the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of 
God, who became man, and continues to be God and man in 
two distinct natures and one person forever ; that the effectual 
calling of sinners is the work of God's Spirit; that their justifi- 
cation is only for the sake of Christ's righteousness by faith.' 
And though we deem no man or body of men infallible, yet we 
believe that those divines that were eminently distinguished in 
the time of the Reformation, possessed the spirit, and maintained 
in great purity, the peculiar doctrines of our holy religion ; and 
that these doctrines are in general clearly and happily expressed ■ 
in the Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism, and in the 
Confession of Faith owned and consented unto by the Elders 
and Messengers of the Churches, assembled at Boston (N. E.), 
May 12th, a. d. 1680." 

The creed of Park Street Church thus asserts that " all 
mankind lost communion with God, are under his wrath 
and curse, and liable to all the miseries of this life, to 
death itself, and to the pains of hell forever." " Some" 
we are told, " are elected to everlasting life." If we wish 
to know how vast a majority of the human race are ex- 
cluded from this elected " some," we turn to the Boston 
Confession to which we have been referred by the Park 
Street Creed itself, and read the implied damnation of 
unelect infants, and the expressed damnation of the great 
body of the heathen world: — 

u in. Elect Infants dying in Infancy are Regenerated and 
Saved by Christ, who worketh when and where and how he 
pleaseth: So also are all other Elect Persons, who are uncapable 
of being outwardly called by the Ministry of the Word." 

1 l iv. Others not elected, although they may be called by the 
Ministry of the Word, and may have some common Operations 
of the Spirit, yet not being effectually drawn by the Father, 
they neither do nor can come unto Christ, and therefore cannot 
be saved; much less can these, not professing the Christian 
Religion, be saved in any other way whatsoever, be they never 



48 THE DOOM OF THE 

so diligent to frame their Lives according to the Light of Nature 
and the Law of that Religion they do profess : And to assert 
and maintain that they may, is very pernicious and to be 
detested." (Chap, x.) 

Whatever may be the personal opinions of the pastor 
of Park Street Church, the creed which he is required to 
subscribe teaches this " dark and awful doctrine," and we 
have no doubt that there is still sung in Park Street 
Church, to the doleful tune of " Windham," a hymn run- 
ning : — 

" Broad is the road that leads to death, 
• And thousands walk together there ; 

But wisdom shows a narrow path, 
With here and there a traveller. ,, 

Sixty years ago Prof. Andrews Norton, when engaged 
in a controversy on the teachings of Calvinism, felt obliged 
to say of some of his opponents : — 

" Instead of endeavoring to maintain, they have denied the 
doctrines of their own system. They have had the assurance 
to assert that that was not Calvinism which for almost three cen- 
turies every theologian has known and acknowledged to be 
Calvinism. They have refused, when pressed hardly, and the 
occasion has required it, to acknowledge the fundamental doc- 
trines of their own creeds and confessions and standard writers. 
They have not given them up explicitly and honestly, and said 
they could not defend them, but they have, in fact, denied the 
Calvinistic faith, at the very moment they have been pretending 
to support it, and have been reviling those by whom it was 
openly opposed." — Christian Disciple, 1822, p. 263. 

These strictures of Professor Norton are not without 
their application to-day. 

We have presented evidence from the principal Evan- 
gelical Creeds of Christendom, which we submit, honestly 
and historically interpreted, clearly teach this doctrine of 
the damnation of the majority. We could frame no blacker 
indictment of Christianity than is presented in these docu- 
ments ; and let it not be forgotten that they are still the 
acknowledged standards of Evangelical Protestantism. 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 49 



III. 

The Doctrine of the Doom of the Majority still 
taught by evangelical denominations. 

Having shown that this doctrine has been alleged by- 
Orthodoxy to be the teaching of the Scripture, and that 
it is taught in its authoritative standards, we purpose 
now to show that it is still held, taught, and urged as a 
practical motive by Evangelical denominations. Ortho- 
doxy has abandoned its former belief in infant damna- 
tion, though the piteous cries of damned children still 
echo from the pages of its creeds. It no longer deduces 
that doctrine from Scripture teaching. But it has never 
surrendered the doctrine that the vast majority of man- 
kind are doomed to eternal misery. The horror still 
appears in its literature, is still preached in its pulpits and 
taught in its Sunday-schools. 

There are three legitimate ways of finding fairly what 
a denomination teaches, all of which must be employed. 
First, we may appeal to its standards. There are some 
who say, with Dr. Withrow, that this is the only proper 
way. Secondly, we may appeal to prominent and acknowl- 
edged representatives. That is, we may appeal, not only 
to its standards, but to its standard hearers — to the men 
that conduct its theological schools, train its ministers, 
fill its representative pulpits, and create its literature. 
It is necessary to compare its creeds with its current 
teachings. Thirdly, we may examine its practical mis- 
sionary motive as well as its theoretical teaching. 

We have already appealed to the standards ; and have 
found the doctrine we assail distinctly taught in them. 
Let us now appeal to its modern and representative 
spokesmen, and examine its practical missionary motive. 

4 



50 THE DOOM OF THE 

dr. emmons's teaching. 

We have referred before to Dr. Emmons. In the course 
of his long pastorate, he trained nearly a hundred students 
for the ministry. He was interested, too, in the formation 
of Andover Seminary. " Perhaps no theological instructor 
in the land," says Dr. Park, " has come so near as Emmons 
to spreading his pupils through an entire century." And 
what did Dr. Emmons teach his pupils, as well as the 
people that sat under his ministration ? A few extracts 
will show : — 

" Though there are only a few of his people who are conformed 
to his image, and the great mass of mankind are opposed to his 
little flock, and conspiring to destroy it, yet all that his Father 
has given him shall come to him." (Vol. ii. p. 386.) 

" This doctrine [of reprobation] cannot be preached too 
plainly. It ought to be represented as God's eternal and 
effectual purpose to destroy the non-elect. God could not repro- 
bate any from eternity without intending to carry his eternal 
purpose into execution." (Vol. ii. p. 401.) 

" If the good of the intelligent creation in general may some- 
times require God to give up the good of individuals, then it may, 
for aught we know, require him to give up the good of individuals 
forever. If the general good of mankind once required the 
temporal destruction of Pharaoh and his hosts, who knows but 
the general good of the whole intelligent creation may also require 
their eternal destruction? Therefore, allowing that God does, in 
this sense, aim supremely and solely at the general good of the 
intelligent creation, yet he may, nevertheless, make myriads and 
myriads of individuals finally and eternally miserable." (Vol. 
iii. p. 779.) 

" If all are sinners in consequence of Adam's first transgres- 
sion, then all have need of embracing the gospel. No other 
way of salvation is provided." (Yol. ii. p. 612.) 

Dr. Emmons even teaches that Arminians will be in- 
cluded among the doomed majority. 

"If God is to be justified in his treatment of Pharaoh and 
of all the rest of the non-elect, then it is absolutely necessary to 



MAJOEITY OF MAXKIXD. 51 

approve of the doctrine of reprobation in order to be saved. None 
can be admitted to heaven who are not prepared to join in the 
employments as well as the enjoyments of the heavenly world. 
And we know that one part of the business of the blessed is to 
celebrate the doctrine of reprobation. They sing the Song of 
Moses and the Lamb, which is an anthem of praise for the 
destruction of Pharaoh and his reprobate host. How, then, can 
any be meet for an inheritance among the saints in light, who 
are not reconciled to the doctrine of reprobation, which is, and 
which will be forever, celebrated there? " (Vol. ii. p. 402.) 

• According to this view, Methodists, and Arminians 
among all the denominations, stand a poor chance. 

Dr. Emmons also shows that character and good works 
will not avail in the slightest : — 

""We learn from what has been said why none of the works 
of sinners will be accepted at the last day. Our Saviour, who 
will be the final Judge, has absolutely declared that he will con- 
demn all sinners and all their works without distinction in the 
great day of account. And though they may plead that they 
have fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick, and 
done many deeds of apparent humanity and benevolence, yet he 
will reject and punish them for that criminal selfishness which 
was the source of all their actions. And this will be a sufficient 
reason for their everlasting perdition.' ' (Yol. ii. p. 644.) 

Dr. Emmons further shows that God created men espe- 
cially to damn them for his good pleasure : — 

" Now, if God be capable of great and noble designs, if he 
be capable of great and noble exertions, and capable of taking 
a true, real, infinite pleasure and delight in all his works, then 
it is easy to conceive that he might make his own pleasure, his 
own blessedness or glory, the grand and supreme object in all 
his works of creation and providence, and have but an inferior 
and subordinate respect to the good of the creature. Accordingly, 
the Scripture represents this as his ultimate and supreme end in 
the creation of the world. ' The Lord hath made all things for 
himself; yea, even the wicked for the day of evil.' " (The Pro- 
cess of the General Judgment, Works, vol. iii., p. 780.) 

These are the teachings which the Congregational Pub- 
lication Society republishes in 1860. 



52 THE DOOM OF THE 

DE. ENOCH POND'S TEACHING. 

Let us take another Orthodox theological school, that 
at Bangor, Me., and turn to the teachings of its venerable 
and respected president, Eev. Enoch Pond, D.D., who 
died in January, 1882. In an article on "The Future 
of the Heathen," in the Christian Heview, Dr. Pond 
writes with the terrible earnestness of one who accepts 
the logical consequences of this doctrine, and whose spirit 
of benevolence is stirred to the depths for the relief of 
the damned. 

" The conclusion, therefore, remains unshaken, notwithstand- 
ing all the objections which may be urged against it, that the 
end of heathenism is eternal death, and that the great body of the 
adult heathen (for we believe that infants are saved the world 
over) will lose their souls forever. 

" And now, what a dreadful conclusion is this! Let us pause 
and ponder it, and not be in haste to dismiss it from our minds. 
JSTot less than six hundred millions of the present inhabitants of 
our globe are heathens. Three fourths of this number are adult 
heathens. Each one of these is an immortal creature, destined 
to outlive the stars, destined to exist forever. 

4 ' Now they have a season of probation; but this is rapidly 
and, in respect to successive multitudes of them, constantly 
coming to a close. A mighty stream is ever pouring them over 
the boundaries of time; and, when once they have passed these 
boundaries, where do they fall ? Alas ! we have seen where ! 
They fall to rise no more. They sink in darkness, misery, and 
despair. They go to be treated not hardly or cruelly, but justly ; 
go to Him by whom " actions are weighed; " go to be punished 
as their sins deserve, forever. Now these are not fictions, but 
facts, — facts fully established by the Scriptures, and proved 
incontestably in the preceding remarks. And are they not stun- 
ning, overwhelming facts, — sufficient, and more than sufficient, 
to rouse up every Christian's heart? 

" Here is a broad current rushing downward from the heathen 
world into that lake which burneth with unquenchable fire, on 
which hundreds of millions of immortal beings are descending, 
and by which thousands upon thousands are every day destroyed ; 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 53 

and shall we sit down and contemplate such a scene, shall we be 
able to speak and write about it unmoved ? Or shall not each 
one rather exclaim, in accents prompted by Christian love: — 

'My God, I feel the mournful scene ! 
My spirits yearn o'er dying men ! 
And fain my pity would reclaim, 

And snatch the firebrands from the flame.' " 

(Christian Review, vol. xxii. 1857, p. 41.) 

DR. SHEDD'S TEACHING. 

There is also an Orthodox theological seminary at New 
York, and Dr. W. G. T. Shedd is one of its eminent pro- 
fessors. In a sermon delivered before the Presbyterian 
Board of Foreign Missions, May 3, 1863, entitled "The 
Guilt of the Pagan," and published by the American Board 
in 1864, Dr. Shedd says : — 

11 Unless the guilt of the pagan world can be proved, the mis- 
sionary enterprises of the Christian church, from the days of 
the Apostles to the present time, have all been a waste of labor." 

( P . i.) 

" It follows inevitably from these positions of St. Paul con- 
cerning the guilt of the pagan , that nothing but revealed religion 
can save him from an eternity of sin and woe." (p. 21.) 

" Our Lord and Saviour knew infallibly how many millions 
upon millions of the race for whom he proposed to pour out his 
life-blood would reject him. He knew long beforehand how 
many millions upon millions of this miserable and infatuated race 
would resist and ultimately quench the only Spirit that could 
renovate and save them. ,, (p. 23.) 

"It is this dark and awful fact," says Dr. Shedd in 
closing his sermon, — dark and awful it truly seems, — 
" that the Church of Christ is continually to keep in mind." 
(p. 22.) The Prudential Committee of the American 
Board were so impressed with the force of this argument 
that they directed a copy of the sermon to be sent to the 
pastors of the various churches which contribute to the 



54 THE DOOM OF THE 

treasury of the American Board. The secretary, Rev. S. 
B. Treat, indorsing his position, says, " The entire heathen 
world is guilty, condemned, lostP (The Italics are his.) 
This is still the position of the American Board. It bases 
its appeals on this " dark and awful fact." Dr. Edwards 
A. Park, at the great missionary meeting in Portland, 
in October, 1882, and in a subsequent discourse, took 
substantially the same position, and asserted that the mis- 
sionary nerve would be cut if a probation after death 
were allowed to the heathen. 

REV. ALBERT BARNES, D. D. 

Rev. Albert Barnes was a leading preacher and writer 
in the Presbyterian Church. In the following passage 
from one of his sermons the great majority of mankind 
are excluded from all hope of heaven : — 

M The admission that the Christian religion is true is a con- 
demnation of all other systems, and shuts out all who are not 
interested in the plan of the gospel from all hope of heaven. " 
{The Way of Salvation, p. 12.) 

As we shall see further on, Dr. Barnes struggled hard 
with the terrible mystery of this doctrine. 

REV. A. A. HODGE, D. D. 

Dr. A. A. Hodge of Princeton Theological Seminary, 
in his Commentary on the Confession of Faith (1869), 
admits without a sign of hesitancy the damnation of 
the majority. 

" That the diligent profession and honest practice of neither 
natural religion, nor of any other religion than pure Christianity 
can in the least avail to promote the salvation of the soul, is 
evident from the essential principles of the gospel." {Commen- 
tary on Conf, p. 241.) 

" That in the case of sane adult persons a knowledge of 
Christ and a voluntary acceptance of him is essential in order 
to a personal interest in his salvation is proved — (1) Paul 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 55 

argues this point explicitly : If men call upon the Lord they 
shall be saved ; but in order to call upon him they must believe ; 
and in order to believe they must hear ; and that they should 
hear the gospel must be preached unto them. ... (2) God has 
certainly revealed no purpose to save any except those who, 
hearing the gospel, obey; and he requires that his people, as 
custodians of the gospel, should be diligent in disseminating 
it as the appointed means of saving souls. Whatever lies 
beyond this circle of sanctified means is unrevealed, unpro- 
mised, uncovenanted. (3) The heathen in mass, with no single 
definite and unquestionable exception on record, are evidently 
strangers to God, and are going down to death in an unsaved 
condition. The presumed possibility of being saved without a 
knowledge of Christ remains, after eighteen hundred years, a 
possibility illustrated by no example." (lb., p. 242.) 

How Dr. Hodge obtained this information, he does not 
tell us. It presumes a familiarity with God's judgments, 
which perhaps is granted only to the elect. 

PRINCETON REYIEW\ 

Dr. Hodge's views on this point are confirmed by an 
article in the Princeton Review, the authoritative organ 
of the Seminary, published in 1860, and entitled "The 
Heathen Inexcusable for their Idolatry." 1 

" They who have never known of a Saviour cannot be guilty 
of the sin of rejecting him. What then is the ground of their 
condemnation ? This question is an important one ; for, if the 
heathen are not under condemnation, what is the use of sending 
them the gospel? If the heathen, or the greater portion of 
them, are to get to heaven through their ignorance, where is the 
necessity for any clearer light, which, reasoning from all past 
experience, the greater majority will not receive? The question, 
in fact, lies still further back, as to the necessity of any gospel 
at all. If we, or any single individual man, could have been 
saved without the atonement, then righteousness would have been 
by that method, and Christ would not have died. The gospel, 

1 In Poole's Index the writer's name is given as J. K. Wight. 



56 THE DOOM OF THE 

however, looks upon all as in a state of condemnation, and that 
none can hope for justification and eternal life except through 
the righteousness of Christ alone." (Princeton Review, 1860, 
vol. xxxii. p. 427.) 

" The heathen are under condemnation, and to them a dark 
and hopeless one: they know of no escape. While, therefore, 
their sin is far less than of those who know the remedy and re- 
ject it, still their condition is one which should excite our deepest 
pity and compassion. The wrath of God is abiding on them. 
From the second death, and all its terrors, they know of no 
escape ; but to us the only remedy for them and us has been made 
known. It is not our object to dwell upon the practical conclu- 
sion which the apostle draws from the fact that the heathen are 
under condemnation ; but the more we recognize the fact, the 
more important must we feel to be the inference from it, — 
namely, that the only hope for Jew and Gentile is in justification 
through faith in Christ, that his is the only name given under 
heaven whereby men can be saved." (/&., p. 448.) 

The damnation of the heathen has not only been held 
as a theological tenet, but it has been urged as the great 
practical motive for missionary effort. This is strikingly 
evident in the article of Dr. Enoch Pond, already quoted. 
In preparing this treatise we have examined all the 
sermons which have been preached before the American 
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions during the 
last forty years, and a few delivered before that Board 
was formed. 

We have been impressed in these sermons with the 
earnestness, zeal, piety, faith, hope, and love which they 
express, and the ability with which they have been pre- 
pared. The range of minor motives, minor when viewed 
from the Orthodox standpoint, is considerable. The good 
effect of missionary work on the churches themselves, 
the improvement of the temporal condition of the hea- 
then, the encouragements derived from work already done, 
are from time to time presented. There are sermons which 
are marked by a pessimistic tone, in which the miseries of 



MAJOKITY OF MANKIND. 57 

the heathen now and hereafter are pictured; and there 
are sermons thoroughly optimistic in their belief in the 
final triumph of Christianity. Indeed, it has ever been a 
powerful motive in missionary appeal to paint the millen- 
nial glories of an entire world converted to Jesus Christ. 
Sometimes, love to Christ is presented as a constraining 
motive ; sometimes, the duty of the Church to obey his 
command to preach his gospel to all nations. Less fre- 
quently than either of these, though often urged with 
tenderness and power, are the obligations that spring from 
human brotherhood. Some writers find their inspiration 
in the great number of the heathen that will be saved if 
the gospel is sent ; others in the vast number that will be 
lost if it is not sent. 

But — whatever be the minor motives which give variety, 
ingenuity, and force to these yearly appeals — the under- 
lying premise on which they are all built is the assumption 
that the heathen form part of a lost and ruined world, and 
that nothing but a personal acceptance of the gospel of 
Jesus Christ can save them from eternal misery. This is 
the key-note of the earliest and latest of these discourses. 
It is the corner-stone of the missionary power. A few 
extracts from some of these sermons, and other missionary 
literature, will show the tenacity with which this doctrine 
is held, and how vital it has been deemed to the whole 
system. 

REV. GORDON HALL. 

Rev. Gordon Hall, a missionary, in a sermon preached 
in 1812, in Philadelphia, said : — 

4 'While the whole number of souls now upon the globe 
amounts to no less than eight hundred millions, there are by 
computation five hundred millions who have never heard of 
the name of Jesus, who know not that a Savior has bled for 
sinners, and are rushing through pagan darkness by millions down 
to hopeless death." (p. 4.) 



58 THE DOOM OF THE 

"The poor pagans have not a ray of gospel light to guide 
them to the world of glory. They are by millions perishing for 
lack of those precious privileges which so many in this country 
are abusing to their own damnation.' ' (p. 15.) 

REY. MYRON WINSLOW. 

At a meeting held at the Old South Church, Boston, 
June 7, 1819, on the evening previous to the sailing of 
several missionaries to Ceylon, Rev. Myron Winslow 
said : — 

" It cannot be denied that the general representation of the 
Bible concerning the heathen world is that they are going down 
to perdition. If, still, the thought of such vast multitudes sink- 
ing into hell, without any knowledge of the only name given 
under heaven by which they can be saved, seems inconsistent 
with the goodness of God, we are to remember that they, with 
all our fallen race, deserve eternal misery; that the provisions of 
the gospel are wholly gratuitous, God being under no obligation 
to communicate them to any; and, if not to any, certainly not 
to all; that he has a right to choose whom he will to salvation; 
and, if he leaves whole nations to perish, it is right. ... It is 
true, the heathen are to be judged according to the light they 
have: they cannot be condemned for rejecting a salvation which 
was never offered them; but they may be condemned, they will 
be condemned, for putting out the light of nature. " (p. 12.) 

REV. WILLIAM HERYEY. 

Rev. William Hervey, missionary to India, 1829, said : — 

"Brethren, have the terms of admission to heaven been 
altered since they were laid down by the Saviour ? Have the 
requisitions of the gospel been softened since the days of the 
apostles ? I know that many professors feel and act as though 
this was the case. But heaven and earth shall pass away before 
one human sinner shall be admitted to glory on altered terms." 

MISS MARY LYON". 

Miss Mary Lyon, the founder of South Hadley Seminary, 
pleaded warmly, in her " Missionary Offering " (1843), for 
the lost heathen : — 



MAJOEITY OF MANKIND. 59 

11 The price of their redemption has been paid. The Holy 
Spirit has been given. But one thing more of all the counsels 
of heaven is wanting to secure their salvation, to make sure of 
their eternal safety. This one thing is the voluntary instrumen- 
tality of man. For the want of this, millions and millions during 
the last eighteen centuries have gone down to everlasting 
death." (p. 30.) 

REV. THOMAS H. SKINNER, D. D. 

Rev. Thomas H. Skinner, D.D., of New York, preached 
the sermon in 1843, and lays down what he considers 
some essential facts on this point : — 

" In the Christian scheme, the following facts are essential : 
that mankind are in a state of sin, and dying in this state are 
utterly lost ; that their recovery can be effected only by their being 
Christianized or brought under the power of the gospel ; that the 
gospel can do nothing where it has not been propagated or is 
unknown." (p. 7.) 

In another passage of the same sermon, Dr. Skinner 
shows how negligent the Church has been in evangelizing 
the world, and to give effect to his reproach adds an in- 
teresting calculation : — 

" Never, since the primitive era, has she [the Church] given 
indication that she felt herself under the sanction of any author- 
ity to evangelize the nations of the earth, while by twenty millions 
a year, during eighteen centuries, they have been passing to their 
eternal destiny, strangers to the influence of God's recovering 
grace.' ' (p. 11.) 

REV. MARK HOPKINS, D. D. 

Rev. Dr. Hopkins, in his sermon in 1845, considered 
humanitarian and civilizing influences alone as insufficient 
to meet the need of the heathen, and said : — 

* ' The burden which rests upon us is not simply a proclamation 
of the gospel among the heathen, but such a proclamation of it 
as shall save the soul. If we fail of this, we fail of our object 
altogether." (p. 19.) 



60 THE DOOM OF THE 



KEY. FRANCIS BOWMAN. 



In a missionary sermon by Bev. Francis Bowman 
(Presbyterian), preached in 1846, we read: — 

" There is not in all truth anything so important to be known 
by the whole world as the fact that i Christ Jesus came into the 
world to save sinners.' Impart all other truth, yet, if this be 
withheld, the teeming millions of the earth' s population will perish." 
(p. 7.) 

REV. RUFUS ANDERSON, D.D. 

Rev. Dr. Rufus Anderson, senior secretary of the Amer- 
ican Board, said in 1851: — 

" Nothing is more truly binding upon us than the obligation 
to impart the gospel to those whom we can reach, and who will 
perish if they do not receive it. That, surely, is the most destruc- 
tive immorality which withholds from immortal man the only 
gospel of salvation. The most pernicious infidelity is surely 
that which cares not for a world perishing in sin." (p. 21.) 

REV. GEORGE W. BETHUNE, D.D. 

Rev. Dr. George W. Bethune, of the Dutch Reformed 
Church, urged, in 1856, the Calvinistic theology as the 
very basis for all missionary work as against all more 
liberal methods. Dr. Bethune argued that the glory 
belonged to Christ : — 

" Even if it were possible (a monstrous supposition) to make 
men repent by any method of our own device, we should not dare 
to use it ; for then we should take the praise from him, and break 
our loyalty. . . . The world is to be saved, but through the con- 
version of individual sinners. We may preach to the multitude, 
but only he who by the grace of God believes the word will be 
blessed." (p. 18.) 

" Myriads of our fellow-sinners, in our land and other lands, 
are still in these horrible depths : the gospel alone can lift them 
out." (p. 38.) 

REV. W. W. PATTON. 

In an article entitled, "The True Theory of Missions to 
the Heathen," in the Bibliotheca Sacra, for July, 1858, 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 61 

Eev. W. W. Patton testifies to the prevalent evangelical 
belief, though he does not hold it : — 

11 We come now to a second theory of missions, which may 
be called the extreme evangelical theory. . . . Can a heathen be 
saved who has lived and died without hearing of Jesus Christ, 
or of the one living and true God ? The theory which we are 
now to consider answers in the negative. It teaches that man 
can in no way be pardoned without specific faith in the Lord 
Jesus Christ as the Saviour of sinners ; and that all the heathen 
who have not been visited by the missionaries of the cross, have 
descended, generation after generation, in unbroken ranks, to 
perdition, their case having been through life as hopeless as that 
of men seized with a fatal malady, the only cure for which is on 
the other side of the globe, with no means of obtaining it. 
To what extent this theory is actually held, in all its rigidity, we 
are unable to say. It is the accepted theory of the Romish 
Church, and of a part of the Protestant Church, perhaps of the 
majority of the latter. The ordinary language of missionary 
letters, addresses, sermons, and reports implies or favors this 
extreme view." (Biblioiheca Sacra, vol. xv. p. 552.) 

Mr. Patton might have gone further, and said that this 
missionary literature not only implies or favors this ex- 
treme view, but that it continually asserts it as absolutely 
necessary to the missionary motive. But we have later 
and additional testimony on this point. 

EEV. R. W. PATTERSON, D. D. 

Rev. Dr. Patterson, of the Second Presbyterian Church, 
Chicago, said, in 1859 : — 

' 'Remember! All these thousands and millions who are 
living and dying without the gospel are of your own blood ! 
Remember ! Their souls are as precious as yours ; Jesus died 
for them as well as for you. Remember ! They are going on 
rapidly to the same great Eternity which lies before you ; and 
what you do for them must be done quickly. I tell you, my 
brethren, we are strong in our cause, when we can press motives 
like these upon the hearts of all the multitudes who know how 
to feel for the woes of perishing souls.' ' (p. 16.) 



62 THE DOOM OF THE 

KEY. TV. G. T. SHEDD, D. D. 

The sermon of Dr. Shedd on the " Guilt of the Pagan," 
published in 1864, has already been referred to. An addi- 
tional quotation is in place here : — 

" Natural religion consigns the entire pagan world to eternal 
perdition. ... It is precisely because the pagan world has not 
obeyed the principles of natural religion, and is under a curse 
and a bondage therefor, that it is in perishing need of the truths 
of revealed religion. Little do those know what they are saying, 
when they propose to find a salvation for the pagan in the mere 
light of natural reason and conscience." (pp. 20, 21.) 

KEY. E. N. KIEK, D.D. 

Eev. Dr. Kirk of Boston said, in 1865 : — 

" The increase of the world's population marches with gigan- 
tic strides. More pagans are born, more die in one year, than we 
have converted in over fifty years." (p. 19.) 

This shows how few heathen are saved, compared with 
the number that are lost. This calculation of Dr. Kirk 
may be compared with that of Dr. Skinner. 

KEY. GEORGE H. POND. 

Rev. George H. Pond, a Presbyterian clergyman and a 
missionary in Minnesota, in an article in the Presbyterian 
Quarterly Beview^ January, 1861, said: — 

" The millions of those who compose the churches believe, or 
profess to believe, that the teachings of the Bible are the teach- 
ings of God. They profess to believe that the man is lost in sin, 
that Jesus toiled and died to save him, and that nothing else can save 
him except the provisions of the gospel. [Italics are his.] . . . And 
yet, notwithstanding all this profession, pagans may be counted 
by tens and by hundreds of millions, who have not even heard 
the name of Jesus. Hundreds of millions have not a solitary 
friend to point them to the Lamb of God, to the blood of the 
atonement." 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 63 

PRESIDENT JAMES H. FAIRCHILD. 

President Fairchild of Oberlin College, in 1877, was 
very clear on this point : — 

11 The great masses of mankind have no such knowledge of 
God as affords them any help or hope for this life or that which 
is to come. . . . Enough of light is mingled with the darkness 
to give the sense of duty and the consciousness of sin, — not 
enough to awaken hope or move them to effort for a better life. 
They belong to the kingdom of darkness, and the powers of 
darkness hold them in bondage. . . . There are none who, by 
special strength or courage, lift themselves above this degrada- 
tion, and walk in ways of righteousness and in the light of God. 
Thus in darkness and sin great masses of our fellow-men live 
and die, and thus they have lived and died throughout the history 
of the race. . . . Our brother of India, of China, of Africa, is 
perishing within our reach and before our eyes. Can we go our 
various ways, one to his farm, and another to his merchandise, 
and not incur the final condemnation, i Inasmuch as ye did it 
not to one of the least of these, ye did it not tome'?" (pp. 9, 
17.) 

REV. E. P. GOODWIN, D. D. 

In no sermon delivered before the American Board has 
this doctrine of the perishing condition of the heathen 
received more distinct utterance than in the sermon be- 
fore that body, delivered by Rev. Dr. E. P. Goodwin 
of Chicago, at Portland, Oct. 3, 1882. This sermon has 
special significance because delivered at a time when the 
question of a second probation for the heathen was actively 
discussed in the Orthodox Congregational body. Dr. 
Goodwin holds that all lax doctrine is hostile to the mis- 
sionary spirit, and plants himself firmly on the old theo- 
logical foundation : — 

" This missionary gospel, this gospel to be preached among 
all the nations, was to be emphatically a gospel of separation, a 
gospel of election, a gospel everywhere calling out and setting 
apart a peculiar people. ... In other words, the supreme end 
which in this age the Holy Spirit proposes to accomplish by this 



64 THE DOOM OF THE 

witnessing of the gospel to all nations, is to call out thence a 
people chosen in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the 
world." (p. 7.) 

Dr. Goodwin then shows how few in number the elect 
are: — 

" We stand under the pierced hands and the bleeding side. 
We know this cross over our heads means blood shed, death 
suffered, for the sin of the world. We compass the nations and 
the ages in our thought, and with him that hangs here our hearts 
reach out far and wide with ardent desire, with inexpressible 
and tearful longings, that all men may know this Christ, may- 
accept this gospel, may possess eternal life. 

" But God's desires are not God's decrees. This Christ pitying 
all, eager to save all, is the Christ rejected, hated, crucified, by 
those he seeks to save. The amazing invitation, ' Come unto 
me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you 
rest, ' is uttered in all ears ; but only here and there a Nicode- 
mus, a woman at the well, a thief on the cross, makes response. 
Across the continents, for eighteen centuries, have sounded the 
wonderful words, ' God so loved the world that he gave his only 
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, 
but have everlasting life ; ' but, among the swarming millions, 
how insignificant the numbers that care to listen, and how few of 
these that are eager to possess the gift ! " (p. 8.) 

Dr. Goodwin is amazed that so few should accept the 
gospel : — 

1 i Are any now oppressed with the thought that this concep- 
tion of the missionary work makes it seem a kind of hopeless 
undertaking ? Do they stand facing these unsaved millions, 
and, with a feeling almost of dismay, ask why, after eighteen 
centuries of the preaching of the cross, so few comparatively have 
been reached and saved ? I do not wonder. There are mysteries 
here that no human wisdom can solve." (p. 10.) 

MISSIONARY REPORTS. 

The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign 
Missions says : — 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 65 

1 ' To send the gospel to the heathen is a work of great exi- 
gency. Within the last thirty years, a whole generation of five 
hundred millions have gone down to eternal death." 

Again the same Board, in its tract entitled "The 
Grand Motive to Missionary Effort," written by one of 
the secretaries of the Board and published in 1853, 
says : — 

" Another and a very powerful motive in this enterprise is 
found in the awful doom which awaits those who live and die icithin 
the precincts of pagan idolatry. [Italics theirs.] This great fact, 
clearly recognized in the Scriptures, is fitted to rouse the deepest 
sympathies of the soul. No believer in Christianity can imagine 
that Christ would have directed his followers to send the gospel 
to ■ every creature,' at such a vast expense of toil and treasure 
and suffering and blood, to be continued down through the lapse 
of ages, if he had known or supposed that the heathen could and 
would be saved just as well without the gospel as with it. No 
theory which admits idolaters of any description into the king- 
dom of heaven can be reconciled with the facts and teachings of 
the Bible. The heathen are involved in the ruins of the apostasy, 
are subjects of a deep and awful depravity, totally unfit for 
heaven, and are expressly doomed to perdition. No body of 
men denying this doctrine ever undertook to evangelize the dark 
places of the earth ; and it may well be doubted whether they 
ever will. Here, then, we have before us a great truth, a Bible 
truth, fitted to fix the eye and pierce the heart. 

'The heathen perish; day hy day, 
Thousands on thousands pass away/ 

" If the Christians of this land could stand together on some 
eminence near the gates of Eternity, and see the sweeping tor- 
rent of deathless souls, from the realms of paganism, daily and 
hourly passing through, and plunging into the fathomless depths 
below, w 7 hat eye would not run down with tears ? what bosom 
would not heave with emotion ? what heart would not be trans- 
fixed with agonies ? what tongue would not pray and cry aloud 
to God, that this river of death might be stopped? ... A 
deathless soul, on the brink of hell, with capacities for heaven, 
and full provision made for its salvation ! What a spectacle ! 

5 



66 THE DOOM OF THE 

Multiply this one by six hundred millions and then contemplate 
the scene. " (pp. 7, 8.) 

Bishop Colenso, in his " Ten Weeks in Natal," gives 
the following extract from an American missionary 
report : — 

" Every hour, yea, every moment they are dying, and dying, 
most of them, without any knowledge of the Saviour. On 
whom now rests the responsibility ? If you fail to do all in 
your power to save them, will you stand at the judgment guilt- 
less of their blood? Said a heathen child, after having embraced 
the Gospel, to the writer, ' How long have they had the Gospel 
in New England?' When told, she asked, with great earnest- 
ness, ' Why did they not come and tell us this before ? ' and 
then added, < My mother died, and my father died, and my 
brother died, without the Gospel.' Here she was unable to re- 
strain her emotions. But, at length, wiping away her tears, she 
asked, ' Where do you think they have gone ? ' I, too, could 
not refrain from weeping, and, turning to her, I inquired, 
4 Where do you think they have gone ? ' She hesitated a few 
moments, and then replied, with much emotion, ' I suppose they 
have gone down to the dark place — the dark place. Oh ! why 
did they not tell us before ? ' It wrung my heart as she repeated 
the question, 'Why did they not tell us before? ' " 

What shall we say of the gladness of a gospel which 
carries such tidings to ignorant heathen ? Remarking on 
this passage the North British Review says : — 

" Can this be mere ad captandum language, intended to draw 
contributions to the missionary societies ? If so, it is very 
wicked. But if it be really genuine and sincere, how melan- 
choly a fanaticism does it display! We shudder at the accounts 
of Devil-worship which come to us from so many mission-fields. 
We pity the dreary delusion of the Manichees, who enthroned 
the Evil Principle in heaven. But if we proclaim that God is 
indeed one who could decree this more than Moloch sacrifice of 
the vast majority of his oion creatures and children, for no fault or 
sin of theirs, we revive the error of the Manichees ; for the God 
whom we preach as the destroyer of the guiltless can be no 
God of justice, far less a God of love." (Vol. xxv. Aug. 1856, 
p. 317.) 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 67 

IV. 

Admissions and Ceiticisms. 

In the foregoing pages we have presented an array of 
unimpeachable evidence concerning the authoritative, tra- 
ditional, and current Evangelical belief in regard to this 
" dark and awful doctrine." We have examined the most 
prevalent Orthodox interpretations of Scripture; we have 
appealed to the standards of Orthodoxy, and to the men 
who made them, — to its theological seminaries, its mis- 
sionary bodies, its authoritative literature, the teachings 
of its pulpits. And now we ask, What becomes of the 
statement that " no Orthodox denomination, no Evangel- 
ical creed in Christendom, teaches that the vast majority 
of the human race are to be the victims of endless woe " ? 

In the light — or, more fitly, in the gloom — of this 
mass of testimony, we appeal to the candor of our readers 
whether it is an " absolute and abominable misrepresenta- 
tion " of Orthodoxy to say that it has taught and still 
teaches the hideous doctrine of the eternal damnation of 
the majority of the race ? If anybody has misrepresented 
Orthodoxy in this respect, it is not we who report its utter- 
ances, but John Calvin, Richard Baxter, Matthew Henry, 
a host of Evangelical commentators, the Synod of Dort, 
the makers of the Westminster, the Savoy, and the Boston 
confessions, the American Tract Society, the American 
and Presbyterian Boards of Foreign Missions, and the 
great leaders of Orthodox theological schools. We admit 
that the word misrepresentation may be applied to the 
awful doctrine which has been described, but it is as a 
misrepresentation of Christianity, not of Orthodoxy. 

We do not claim that this unnatural doctrine has never 
met with protest. On the contrary, through all the years 
in which it has been taught, — under the shelter of Biblical, 
Papal, and Synodical authority, — there have been men 



68 THE DOOM OF THE 

who have lifted up their voices against it, from the time 
of Origen down to Murray, Chapin, Bellows, and Farrar. 
But they have always been in the minority, and have 
either been cast out of organized Orthodoxy, or regarded 
with suspicion. When Curio, in 1532, maintained that " the 
number of the saved, in which he includes virtuous hea- 
then, will far exceed that of the lost, this doctrine* was 
deemed so dangerous that the Senate of Basel refused to 
allow him to publish the work, and the first edition was 
printed surreptitiously." x We honor the brave souls 
in every age who have protested against the moral and 
practical implications of this belief, and wish there was 
no longer any occasion to continue their remonstrance ; 
but in spite of the increasing minority of those who have 
repudiated it within Orthodox circles, we are forced, after 
a wide examination of current testimony, to the conclu- 
sion of Canon Farrar, that " it is needless to prove that 
this has continued to be the popular opinion." 2 

1. Evangelical Admissions. 

That an Orthodox minister in Boston should indig- 
nantly deny that " any Evangelical creed in Christendom " 
teaches the doom of the majority, may be construed as a 
virtual admission that the doctrine is not one which Ortho- 
doxy would gladly own. There is another line of defence 

1 For references concerning those who have taken ground in behalf 
of the salvability of the unconverted heathen, and in fact for the gen- 
eral and special literature of every aspect of the doctrine of the future 
life, see the Bibliography by Professor Ezra Abbot, D.D., LL.D., of 
Harvard University, appended to Rev. W. R. Alger's " Critical His- 
tory of the Doctrine of a Future Life." No one can tre'kt any phase 
of this subject historically without consulting this invaluable Bibli- 
ography. In addition to the constant aid we have obtained from it, 
we must also acknowledge the kind assistance of its author in revising 
proofs of these pages. 

2 Mercy and Judgment, p. 154. 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 69 

open to persons of this view, and that is, to show that 
modern Orthodoxy has renounced the tenets of Calvin, 
the Westminster Assembly, the Synod of Dort, the Savoy 
Declaration, the Boston Confession, the Plymouth Declar- 
ation, and the teachings of Emmons, Pond, Park, Hodge, 
and the numerous authorities we have quoted. Liberal 
Orthodoxy has taken a step in this direction, but the great 
majority of the Orthodox, Congregational, Presbyterian, 
Baptist, and Reformed denominations are not yet ready 
to confess that the Creeds and Fathers were mistaken in 
this matter. On the contrary, the doctrine is still freely 
and boldly confessed. It is even considered dangerous to 
Orthodoxy to relax in any degree its rigorous belief in 
respect to the destiny of the great body of the heathen 
world. 

VARIOUS LETTERS. 

Since the appearance of our article on this subject in 
the Christian Register of Jan. 4, 1883, we have received 
various communications from Orthodox believers who 
have expressed their surprise that the prevalence of the 
doctrine should be at all questioned. 

A lady, whose goodness is as sound as her Orthodoxy, 
writes concerning the doom of the majority: — 

" All I will try to say is this: the doctrine is truly an awful 
one ; but we find it in the Bible, and those of us who believe in 
that book cannot ignore it. So we seek to leave the matter with 
Him who is not only the Judge of all the earth, but a God of 
infinite mercy and love. Surely, He will do that which is right. ' ' 

An Orthodox minister writes : — 

"It is wasting powder to prove that Orthodox Christians 
believe that l broad is the way that leads to death, and many 
there be that walk therein;' while strait, narrow, few, &c, are 
the words of Jesus. Your quotations are perfectly fair, as 
proving this to be our historic and present belief. It is un- 
doubtedly the opinion of most Orthodox Christians that the 
great majority of the human race, who have as yet died in mature 
years, are lost," 



70 THE DOOM OF THE 

Various friends, who like the writer were reared within 
the Evangelical fold, have confessed that they never 
thought of entertaining any other belief on this subject. 

THE EXAMINEE. 

The Examiner \ of New York, is one of the most promi- 
nent organs of the Baptist denomination in this country. 
In a comparatively recent issue, it freely concedes the 
point we have pressed, in regard to the damnation of the 
vast majority of the adult portion of the race. It 
says : — 

" The idea of a probation in this life does imply the possibility 
of salvation, but the possibility may never be realized. As a 
matter of fact, we believe that, for the vast majority of the heathen, 
this possibility never is realized, and we never yet heard of an Ortho- 
dox theologian who held any other belief than this. 1 ' l 

This is a sad confession to make, but it has the virtue 
of candor. 

THE PRESBYTERIAN. 

The doctrine is again frankly acknowledged in an edi- 
torial article in the Presbyterian, March 10, 1883. It is 
considered to be absolutely essential to the missionary 
motive: — 

" Foreign Missions were conceived in the idea that the heathen 
world was perishing, and that the duty of the Church was, by 
every sacrifice possible, to save them. Any such scheme would 
have been still-born without this vital centre, this heart of all 
endeavor. The Church in New England grew strong in this 
conviction, — unselfish, aggressive, and glorious. The pulsations 
of the New England — we might say Boston — heart went to the 
extremities of this whole country. 

" And now, after building a kingdom of power and glory at 
home, and laying the foundations of revolution from heathenism 
to new life in every nation under heaven, on which the super- 
structure of life eternal may go up in divine proportions, it is 

1 Examiner, New York, Feb. 15, 1883. 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 71 

suddenly discovered in Boston that the heart has dropped out; 
and it must, of course, be given up. 

1 ' Foreign Mission zeal and endeavor, together, form the test 
of a standing or falling Church. Where there is no zeal and no 
conscientious sacrifice for Foreign Missions, there will be none 
for Home Evangelization. Hence, when this conception of 
urgency and sacrifice to achieve its end, because the world with- 
out salvation by Christ is dead, is abandoned, the death of 
Evangelism will have no geographical bounds. It will be death 
at home and abroad. It is a short cut to atheism, when death 
will reign supreme ; for Home and Foreign Missions, resting on 
the fact given in Revelation, that the world without salvation is 
lost, are as supplemental to each other as the lobes of the brain, 
and in their workings as active and reactive." 

It would be strange indeed, if, in the mass of testimony 
we have adduced in illustration of this doctrine, there 
should not be confessions of its dismal and terrible nature. 
The reason and the emotions must at times revolt against 
the hideous consequences of a dogma so painful to the 
affections and so contrary to our highest conceptions of 
divine goodness. With such an admission this paper began. 
Dr. Shedd confesses it to be a " dark and awful doctrine." 
John Calvin called it u a dreadful decree ; " Chrysostora, 
" a terrible truth ; " Doddridge, u a dreadful truth ; " Dean 
Goulburn describes it as " awfully startling ; " Rev. Enoch 
Pond termed it " an affecting truth, ... a dreadful conclu- 
sion, . . . sufficient to rouse up every Christian's heart." 
The same confession is frankly and even tearfully made in 
a host of missionary discourses. Sometimes the conscious- 
ness of the painful nature of this doctrine is so poignant 
that we scarcely know whom to pity more, the "vast ma- 
jority" condemned to this woe, or the minority, unfortu- 
nate enough to believe in their damnation. 

A REMARKABLE CONFESSION. 

The mysterious and appalling features of this dogma 
have seldom been stated with more power than by one 



72 THE DOOM OF THE 

of the most widely known and most popular of Presby- 
terian preachers and commentators, Rev. Albert Barnes. 1 
Struggling with the doubts and difficulties which his 
attempt to believe in this doctrine inevitably suggested, 
he makes the following remarkable confession : — 

" That the immortal mind should be allowed to jeopard its 
infinite welfare, and that trifles should be allowed to draw it 
away from God and virtue and Heaven ; that any should suffer 
forever, — lingering on in hopeless despair and rolling amidst 
infinite torments, without the possibility of alleviation and with- 
out end; that since God can save men, and will save a part, he 
has not purposed to save all; that, on the supposition that the 
atonement is ample, and that the blood of Christ can cleanse 
from all and every sin, it is not in fact applied to all; that, in a 
word, a God who claims to be worthy of the confidence of the 
universe, and to be a being of infinite benevolence, should make 
such a world as this, full of sinners and sufferers ; and that 
when an atonement had been made, He did not save all the race, 
and put an end to sin and woe forever, — these, and kindred 
difficulties, meet the mind when we think on this great subject; 
and they meet us when we endeavor to urge our fellow-sinners 
to be reconciled to God, and to put confidence in Him. On this 
ground they hesitate. These are real, not imaginary difficulties. 
They are probably felt by every mind that has ever reflected on 
the subject; and they are unexplained, unmitigated, unremoved. 
I confess, for one, that I feel them, and feel them more sensibly 
and powerfully the more I look at them, and the longer I live. 
I do not understand these facts ; and I make no advances towards 
understanding them. I do not know that I have a ray of light 
on this subject, which I had not when the subject first flashed 
across my soul. 

" I have read, to some extent, what wise and good men have 
written; I have looked at their theories and explanations, I have 
endeavored to weigh their arguments ; for my whole soul pants 
for light and relief on these questions. But I get neither; and 
in the distress and anguish of my own spirit, I confess that I 
see no light whatever. I see not one ray to disclose to me the 

1 "Practical Sermons," pp. 123-125, quoted in C. F. Hudson's 
"Debt and Grace," pp. 54, l>o. 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 73 

reason why sin came into the world, why the earth is strewed 
with the dying and the dead, and why man mnst suffer to all 
eternity. 

u I have never yet seen a particle of light thrown on these 
subjects, that has given a moment's ease to my tortured mind ; 
nor have I an explanation to offer, or a thought to suggest, that 
would be of relief to you. I trust other men — as they profess 
to do — understand this better than I do, and that they have 
not the anguish of spirit which I have; but I confess,, when I 
look on a world of sinners and sufferers, upon death-beds and 
grave-yards, upon the world of woe, filled with hosts to suffer 
forever; when I see my friends, my parents, my family, my 
people, my fellow-citizens, — when I look upon a whole race, all 
involved in this sin and danger ; and when I see the great mass 
of them wholly unconcerned, and when I feel that God only can 
save them, and yet he does not do it, — I am struck dumb. It 
is all dark, dark, dark to my soul, and I cannot disguise it." 

There is something mournfully pathetic in such a con- 
fession as this. It reminds us that the tenets of Calvinism, 
even with the discriminations which they make in favor of 
those who accept them, are not held by tender and humane 
believers without pain and struggle of soul. Again we 
ask, can this be the natural and proper effect of the glad 
gospel of "peace on earth, good- will to men"? There 
are many sources of doubt and mystery in the world about 
us. It is the office of religion, truly interpreted, to help 
us to meet them with manly hope and faith, and not to 
create, from traditional and legendary assumptions, artifi- 
cial mysteries which are more distressing than those which 
are real. Dr. Barnes here assumes, in accordance with 
the standards of his church, that "the whole race" is 
"involved in this sin and danger, and that "the great 
mass of them" w r ill not be saved from eternal ruin, 
although God might do it if he wished. Is it any won- 
der that he says "it is all dark, dark, dark," and confesses 
that he has never " seen a particle of light thrown on these 
subjects, that has given a moment's ease to [his] tortured 
mind"? 



74 THE DOOM OF THE 

A STUBBORN AND AWFUL FACT. 

In the first volume of his scholarly work on "The 
Creeds of Christendom," Dr. Philip Schaff, in criticising 
the Westminster system of doctrine, candidly admits " the 
stubborn and awful facts" which confront it, and the 
difficulties that inhere not only in Calvinism, but in all 
other Orthodox systems : — 

* ' It must in fairness be admitted that the Calvinistic system 
only traces undeniable facts to their first ante-mundane cause 
in the inscrutable counsel of God. It draws the legitimate logi- 
cal conclusions from such anthropological and eschatological 
premises as are acknowledged by all other Orthodox churches, 
Greek, Roman, Lutheran, and Reformed. They all teach the 
condemnation of the human race in consequence of Adam's 
fall, and confine the opportunity and possibility of salvation 
from sin and perdition to this present life. And yet everybody 
must admit that the vast majority of mankind, no worse by nature 
than the rest, aud without personal guilt, are born and grow up ■ 
in heathen darkness, out of the reach of the means of grace, 
and are thus, as far as we know, actually ' passed by ' in this 
world. No orthodox system can logically reconcile this stubborn 
and awful fact with the universal love and impartial justice of God" 
(Creeds of Christendom, vol. i. p. 793.) 

Dr. Emmons, who labored hard to reconcile this doc- 
trine with the justice of God, would probably have been 
shocked at this candid admission of Dr. Schaff ; but the 
strenuous efforts he made to strengthen this obviously 
weak point in his theological system only shows that he 
was aware of one of its greatest difficulties. Indeed, 
there is seldom a writer on this doctrine who does not, 
consciously or unconsciously, betray its essential defect. 

SAD AND LAMENTABLE. 

We know, for instance, of no preacher, on the subject 
of the few that are saved, who more implicitly believed 
it than Henry Scougal of Aberdeen, 1650-1678. He 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 75 

even praised the curiosity of the man who asked Jesus 
the question recorded in Luke ; but the " sad and lament- 
able " side of the doctrine did not escape his notice. In 
his sermon entitled " That there are but a Small Number 
Saved," he says: — 

u Seeing we are assured that there are different and very oppo- 
site estates of departed souls, some being admitted into happiness, 
and others doomed to misery, beyond anything that we can con- 
ceive; this may put them upon farther inquiry, how mankind 
is like to be divided ? Whether heaven or hell shall have the 
greater share ? Such a laudable curiosity as this it was, that 
put one of our blessed Saviour's followers to propose the question 
in the text : 'Lord, are there few that be saved ? ' " (Scougal, 
Works, p. 131.) 

"Duty doth oblige us, and the Holy Scriptures will warrant 
us to assure you, that there are very few that shall be saved; 
that the whole world lieth in wickedness ; and that they are a 
little flock to whom the Father will give the kingdom." (lb., 
p. 134.) 

" The doctrine we have been insisting on is sad and lament- 
able ; but the consideration of it may be very useful. It must 
needs touch any serious person with a great deal of grief and 
trouble to behold a multitude of people convened together, and to 
think that, before thirty or forty years, a little more or great 
deal less, they shall all go down unto the dark and silent grave, 
and the greater, the far greater, part of their souls shall be 
damned unto endless and unspeakable torments." (Ib. y p. 147.) 

The conflict of the moral sense with the supposed facts 
of revelation is apparent in the following : — 

" When we have said all that we can say, there are many that 
will never be persuaded of the truth of that which we have been 
proving. They cannot think it consistent with the goodness and 
mercy of God, that the greatest part of mankind should be 
damned; they cannot imagine that heaven should be such an 
empty and desolate place, and have so very few to inhabit it. 
But oh, what folly and madness is this, for sinful men to set 
rules unto the divine goodness, and draw conclusions from it so 
expressly contrary to what himself hath revealed!" (76., 
p. 146.) 



76 THE DOOM OF THE 

There are still many who think it " folly and madness " 
to dispute Orthodox interpretations of the Scripture, or 
the theological tenets concerning the destiny of man 
which have been founded upon them ; but the moral 
sense can no longer be defrauded of its right to "prove 
all things, and hold fast that which is good ; " and we may 
feel perfectly confident that declarations or interpretations 
of Scripture, affirmations or anathemas of creeds, and alt 
practical or theoretical assumptions concerning God and 
humanity which affront the moral sense, must sooner or 
later be abandoned. 

EXCRUCIATING THOUGHTS. 

In a missionary sermon delivered in 1834, Rev. Gardiner 
Spring, D.D., of New York, presented with great power 
some of the " excruciating thoughts " which believers in 
this doctrine must inevitably suffer : — 

" Who can tell if some poor Pagan is not this day struggling 
for the assurance of a happy immortality, who • through your 
mercy might have obtained mercy.' To the hopes of the dying 
believer he is a stranger. He never dwelt in a Christian land. 
He never heard a sermon, nor saw a Bible. lie knows not that 
the blood of Jesus cleanseth from all sin. No ; he is the victim 
of a dark and dreadful idolatry ! Around his bed of death 
gather the shades of an impenetrable night. Over his prospects 
for eternity are collected heavy and dense clouds of unappeased 
indignation. Approach and see. His bosom is torn and dis- 
tracted with anguish. His lips quiver with agony, and he draws 
his last gasp in despair ! And oh, that it were one solitary 
Pagan only! But, think of twenty-five millions of your fellow- 
men every year sinking in such a death ; and then look into that 
deep abyss, where millions after millions of years roll on, and 
the miserable sufferers encounter new dangers, new fears, new 
scenes of anguish, without any prospect of termination; and 
what emotions of grief, abasement, and horror may smite our 
bosoms! ' We are verily guilty concerning our brother.' Here 
are miseries which our faithfulness might have relieved. But 
for our guilty slumber, multitudes of these immortal beings 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 77 

might have been trained to a happy immortality. Excruciating 
thought ! O immeasurable responsibility ! because the remedy 
for these woes is in our hands. Sin infinite ! to be washed away 
only by atoning blood." (pp. 28, 29.) 

DARK AND DISTRESSING. 

Rev. Samuel Miller, D.D., Professor in the Theological 
'Seminary, Princeton, N. J., thus calculated in 1835: — 

" Of the eight hundred millions of the world's population, 
but little more than an eightieth part are even professors of 
religion in any Scriptural form, or claim to know anything of its 
sanctifying power. . . . Such is, confessedly, at present the dark 
and distressing state of the great mass of our world's popula- 
tion. . . . What a little remnant, among all the multiplied 
millions of mankind, have any adequate or saving knowledge of 
the religion of Christ ! " {Sermon before the American Board, 
1835, p. 15.) 

AN AWFUL VIEW. 

The following, from a sermon before the American 
Board in 1859, by Rev. Robert W. Patterson, D.D., of 
Chicago, completely concedes the two points we have 
endeavored to establish; namely, that the " majority" 
are doomed to endless woe by Orthodoxy ; and secondly, 
that the doctrine is one " awful " to contemplate. It is 
urged by Dr. Patterson as a motive for missionary effort : — 

14 The great Scriptural doctrine that this is the only place of 
probation to the members of our fallen race, and that those who 
die out of Christ are lost forever, sets before our minds an awful 
view of the destiny that awaits the majority of the living generation 
of our race; while it presses home an appeal to the sympathies 
of all who know the value and preciousness of the Christian 
hope, which must, if anything can, stir them up to make haste 
and send the word of life to their dying fellow-sinners. It bids 
us to keep in mind that the time is short within which there can 
be anything done to save the six hundred millions of heathen, 
and the three or four millions of Mohammedans and dead 
formalists and heartless unbelievers, who are now hastening to 



iO THE DOOM OF THE 

the close of their probationary life without any preparation for 
a happy eternity. And it admonishes us to remember that we 
ourselves can have, at the most, only a few years to be spent in 
efforts to rescue the souls of our fellow- heirs of immortality 
from the woes of the second death." (p. 34.) 

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 

It may not be wholly out of place for the writer to add 
his own experience. With humiliation, and with all charity 
for those from whom he now differs, he must confess that 
he once held this doctrine himself. He was taught, on 
uniting with the Christian Church, that it was infallibly 
revealed in the Scriptures. He recalls the sense of hum- 
ble gratitude he experienced when he felt that God had 
called him from before the foundation of the world to 
be an heir of glory, while millions of others better entitled 
to this distinction, the vast majority of the race, w r ere left 
to perish. He recalls, too, the terrible conflict which this 
conviction had to encounter with his sentiments of justice 
and benevolence; his struggle with creeds, texts, and 
" divine decrees," until finally he determined to " let God 
be true, though every man a liar." 

£. Evangelical Protests, 

The admissions we have presented, conceding — with 
dark, mysterious, sad, lamentable, awful, and various other 
adjectives — the painful and difficult features of this view 
of the eternal destiny of the vast majority of the race, 
have been taken entirely from Evangelical writers, most 
of them accepting the doctrine and seeing no way of 
escape from it. We now call to the witness-stand another 
class of Evangelical writers, — those who have felt the 
difficulties and implications of this dogma so strongly 
that they have been obliged to abandon some of its most 
obnoxious features and to protest against them. Most of 
these protests are not directed against the assumption of 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 79 

the eternal doom of the majority, but against the as- 
sumption that it is the majority of mankind that are 
eternally doomed. It is the first assumption that consti- 
tutes the chief horror of this doctrine. If that were 
removed, there would be no need to protest against the 
second. Arminians have generally been quite as guilty 
as Calvinists in teaching the endless misery of those who 
are damned ; but the battle between them has related 
mainly to the extent of the atonement, the conditions 
of salvation, and the proportion of those who should avail 
themselves of it. As we have seen in the chapter on 
the Evangelical Creeds, the Arminians bitterly reproached 
the Calvinists for teaching the damnation of the majority 
of mankind. Calvinism has never been able to clear its 
skirts of this reproach. It is a natural and logical infer- 
ence from its theological system ; it is indelibly written 
in its creeds and inscribed in its literature, and remains 
to-day, as we have shown, an acknowledged tenet of its 
modern advocates. Arminianism, on the other hand, — 
while in some of its presentations it has taken refuge in 
the miserable device of water baptism to wash out from 
the blood of infants the taint of inherited sin, — has refused 
either to damn infants on account of Adam's transgres- 
sion, or to damn the heathen for not accepting a gospel 
which had never been presented to them. In its rejection 
of the harsh, high Calvinistic views of predestination and 
reprobation, in its proclamation of an unlimited atone- 
ment and the freedom of all men to accept it, Arminian- 
ism did much to relieve our conception of the character 
of God from the imputation which these doctrines have 
cast upon it. 

NOT JESUS BUT THE DEVIL. 

The reproaches which modern Universalists and Unita- 
rians have cast upon Orthodoxy, for teaching the damna- 
tion of the majority, have not been more severe than those 



80 THE DOOM OF THE 

which have sometimes been hurled at it from Evangelical 
and Anti-Calvinistic sources. Curio, in 1569, instead of 
attributing the opinion of the fewness of the saved to 
Jesus, went so far as to attribute it to the devil, arguing 
that God wished to pour forth his goodness and pity on 
the most, and not on the few. 1 Curio was much abused 
for the book, but two hundred years later Charles Wesley 
made precisely the same charge. Those who have known 
the Methodist poet only in his milder devotional hymns 
may be surprised to see with what bitter sarcasm, pointed 
invective, and intense feeling he opposed the Calvinistic 
assumption of the doom of the majority. His series of 
hymns entitled " Hymns on God's Everlasting Love " are 
nearly all of them directed against what he calls this 
"hellish blasphemy." Note the keen irony and bold 
denunciation of the following : — 

charles wesley's protest. 

" Ah ! gentle gracious Dove, 

And art Thou griev'd in me, 
That sinners should restrain thy love, 

And say, f It is not free ; 

It is not free for all : 

The most Thou passest by, 
And mockest with a fruitless call 

Whom Thou hast doom'd to die.' 

" They think Thee not sincere 

In giving each his day, 
Thou only draw'st the sinner near, 

To cast him quite away : 

To aggravate his Sin, 

His sure damnation seal: 
Thou shew'st him heaven, and say'st, ' Go in/ 

And thrust'st him into hell. 

1 Quoted by Farrar, " Mercy and Judgment/' p. 25. 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 81 

" O Horrible Decree, 1 

Worthy of whence it came ! 
Forgive their hellish blasphemy, 

Who charge it on the Lamb : 

Whose pity Him inclin'd 

To leave his throne above, 
The friend and Saviour of mankind, 

The God of grace and love. 



" To limit Thee they dare, 

Blaspheme Thee to thy face, 
Deny their fellow- worms a share 

In thy redeeming grace : 

All for their own they take, 

Thy righteousness engross, 
Of none effect to most they make 

The merits of thy cross. 

" Sinners, abhor the fiend, 

His other gospel hear, 
The God of truth did not intend 

The thing His words declare ; 

He offers grace to all, 

Which most cannot embrace, 
Mock'd with an ineffectual call, 

And insufficient grace. 

" The righteous God consign'd 

Them over to their doom, 
And sent the Saviour of mankind 

To damn them from the womb; 

To damn for falling short 

Of what they could not do, 
For not believing the report 

Of that which was not true. 

1 Whenever Wesley uses these words in these hymns he prints 
them in small capitals. The capitalization of pronouns referring to 
Deity is irregular. 

6 



82 THE DOOM OF THE 

" The God of Love past by 
The most of those that fell , 

Ordain' d poor reprobates to die, 
And forc'd them into hell, 
He did not do the deed, 
(Some have more mildly rav'd), 

He did not damn them — but decreed 
They never should be sav'd. 

" He did not them bereave 

Of Life, or stop their breath, 
His grace he only would not give, 

And starv'd their souls to death. 

Satanic sophistry! 

But still all-gracious God, 
They charge the sinner's death on Thee, 

Who bought'st him with thy blood. 

" They think with shrieks and cries 

To please the Lord of Hosts, 
And offer Thee, in sacrifice, 

Millions of slaughter 'd ghosts; 

With new-born babes they fill 

The dire infernal shade, 
For such (they say) was thy great will 

Before the world was made. 

" How long, O God, how long 
Shall Satan's rage proceed! 

Wilt Thou not soon avenge the wrong, 
And crush the serpent's head ! 
Surely Thou shalt at last 
Bruise him beneath our feet ; 

The devil, and his doctrine cast 
Into the burning pit. 

"Arise, O God, arise, 
Thy glorious truth maintain, 

Hold forth the bloody sacrifice 
For every sinner slain ! 



MAJORITY OF UASKDSTD. 83 

Defend thy mercy's cause, 
Thy grace divinely free ; 
Lift up the standard of thy cross, 
Draw all men unto thee." 

{Hymns on God's Everlasting Love, Hymn xvn. p. 30.) 

In another hymn Wesley indignantly disclaims "the 
devil's doctrine : " — 

" God forbid, that I should dare 
To charge my death on Thee: 
No, thy truth and mercy tear 

The Horrible Decree ! 
Tho' the devil's doom I meet, 
The devil's doctrine I disclaim ; 
Let it sink into the pit 

Of hell, from whence it came. 

(Hymn vn. p. 14.) 

The following is Wesley's not very courteous explana- 
tion of Calvinism : — 

" They would not the pure truth receive, 

Sav'd when they might, they would not be, 

God therefore left them to believe 
The devil's Horrible Decree: 

And lo ! they still believe a lye, 

That God did Nine in Ten pass by. 

* ' In them the strong delusion reigns, 

That none but they in Christ have hope, 
The poison spreads throughout their veins, 

And drinks their angry spirits up ; 
1 Let all but us in Tophet dwell, 
Away with reprobates to hell.' " 

(Hymn x. p. 62.) 

In the following he thanks God for restraining him 
from believing in " the devil's law : " — 



84 THE DOOM OF THE 

" I could the devil's law receive, 
Unless restrain'd by thee ; 
I could, (good God! ) I could believe 
The Horrible Decree. 

" I could believe that God is Hate, 
The God of love and grace 
Did damn, pass by, and reprobate 
The most of human race, 

M Farther than this I cannot go, 
Till Tophet take me in : 
But O forbid that I should know 
This mystery of sin." 

(Hymn vi. p. 52.) 

Wesley even prays that his hate of this doctrine may 
be increased ; but the reader of these poems will be in- 
clined to agree with his surmise that that is hardly 
possible : — 

" Increase (if that can be) 

The perfect hate I feel 
To Satan's Horrible Decree, 
That genuine child of hell ; 
Which feigns Thee to pass by 
The most of Adam's race, 
And leave them in their blood to die, 
Shut out from saving grace." 

(Hymn xn. p. 66.) 

MODERN METHODIST PROTEST. 

Methodism has maintained this attitude towards Cal- 
vinism down to the present day. But a few weeks since, 
Rev. W. F. Mallalieu, D.D., of Boston, said, in ZiorCs 
Herald (Jan. 31, 1883), the Methodist paper of that 
city: — 

11 The fact must pretty soon become apparent that Orthodoxy 
will have to give up Calvinism, with all its narrowness and incon- 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 85 

gruity, or it will disintegrate at a rate so rapid that living men 
will see the last of it. It is too late in the history of the world 
to undertake to defend the dogmas of Calvinism; they deserve 
neither defence nor apology ; they have dishonored God and his 
gospel from the very first; they have been an immeasurable 
hindrance to the triumphs of Christianity; and the sooner they 
are buried in the grave of oblivion, the better for all concerned." 

The Central Christian Advocate, an organ of the 
Methodist Church, published at St. Louis, said in its issue 
of Feb. 28, 1883: — 

" Now the humanity and spirituality of this century has 
thoroughly undermined the* principles of this un-Christian 
theology. Men are no longer willing to believe that immortal 
souls are consigned to eternal punishment without having a 
chance of salvation. And this doctrine of a probation after 
death is simply a metaphysical scheme to save a tottering theo- 
logical system. . . . Methodism has taught, and will continue to 
teach, that Christ died for all men, and that all men will be saved 
who make the best of the light, talents, and opportunities which 
God offers them. We do not claim to be able to explain the 
divine methods perfectly, but we affirm with confidence that God 
is the loving Father, wise, just, merciful, and loving, not desir- 
ing the death of any, but offering them spiritual help and 
salvation. Probation after death is simply a speculation, and 
does not commend itself to thoughtful men. Christ teaches us 
plainly how to meet these questions to which there is no definite 
answer in his own words. When one came unto him and asked, 
1 Are they few that be saved ? ' his answer was, ' Strive to enter 
in at the strait gate ; for many, I say unto you, will seek to 
enter in, and shall not be able.' " 

Though the Methodist Church has taken strong ground 
against the doom of the majority, and though the doctrine 
of everlasting punishment is not taught in its " Twenty- 
five Articles of Religion " drawn up by John Wesley, 
yet Methodists, in common with other Arminian bodies, 
have preached the endless doom of the minority. The fear 
of hell has been a great weapon in Methodist revivals, and 



86 THE DOOM OF THE 

the future destiny of all those who reject the atonement 
of Christ has been described in lurid, sulphurous language. 
There is no worse description of the horrors of hell in 
Jonathan Edwards, Boston, or Wigglesworth, than may- 
be found in Charles Wesley's hymn entitled " The Cry of 
a Reprobate." * 

EPISCOPALIAN PEOTESTS. 

Some of the most earnest and determined opponents of 
this doctrine of the doom of the majority have been found 
among preachers and writers of the Church of England. 
We need only refer to a few. . 

A striking repudiation of the doctrine is found in a tract 
entitled "God's Sovereignty and his Universal Love to 
the Souls of Men reconciled, in a reply to Mr. Jonathan 
Dickinson," by John Beach, A.M., Boston, 1747 ; and a 
second tract by the same author entitled " A Second Vin- 
dication of God's Sovereign Free Grace indeed," Boston, 
1748. In the course of this debate Mr. Beach said : — 

"But to draw the Picture of the ever-blessed God according 
to our Idea of the very worst of Beings ; to represent him as an 
Hater of the greater Part of Mankind, as one who hated his own 
Offspring before they were born, and resolved to damn them to 
Hell- Torments before they had done Good or Evil, or were capa- 
ble of offending him, merely to shew his Sovereignty, and that 
he can do what he pleases with his own ; as one whose Justice is 
such, that he sets the Children's Teeth on Edge, because their 
Father had eaten sour Grapes Thousands of Years before they 
were born; and makes them a motly Mixture of Beast and Devil, 
as fast as he gives them Being, because Adam sinned, which 
was not in their Power to prevent, as one whose Love to the 
Souls of men is so very little that when all might have been 
redeemed by Christ's Passion as well as a few, he of his meer 
Pleasure chose that the bigger Part by far of them who equally 
needed it, and would have equally improved it, should be excluded, 
and shut out, and have no Part or Share in it ; not because it 

1 Hymns on God's Everlasting Love ; Hymn xi. p. 21. 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 87 

would have made any Addition to Christ's Sufferings, but merely 
because God did not chuse that they should be saved. And 
though he declares his most tender Love to Mankind, and his 
compassionate Concern for their Salvation, and intreats them to 
be happy, and swears to them that he does not will their Death, 
but their Conversion and Life, and asks them affectionately, why 
they will die ? and how long it will be ere they be made clean ? 
and what could be done for them more ? and wishes they would 
hearken to him, and says: O that thou hadst known the Things 
that belong to thy Peace, yet notwithstanding all this Show of 
Mercy, his secret Decree and unchangeable Will and Desire is, 
that the most of them shall burn forever in that Fire prepared 
for the obstinate Devil and his Angels. And therefore would 
not that his Son should effectually redeem them, or his Spirit 
yield them sufficient Grace, without which he knew, they could 
no more escape Hell than they could shun Death. Now when 
we represent God to our Minds surrounded with this amazing 
Horror, how can we prevent our Hearts rising against him, and 
wishing there was no such God. I profess for my Part, I had 
rather a Million Times, never to have had a Being, than to 
think thus of God." (A Second Vindication of God's Sovereign 
Free Grace indeed, p. 80.) 

More than a hundred years have passed since this was 
written, and, sad to relate, there is still occasion for the 
same protest. 

Mr. Beach further said in regard to the heathen : — 

11 You take it for granted, that we have the same Notion of 
the Heathen World, as you have of the Reprobates who were 
doomed to Hell-Fire before they were born, and when brought 
into Being are left under a Necessity of being wicked and mis- 
erable ; but you are very much mistaken ; for we utterly deny 
that the Heathen are left under a Necessity of being Eternally 
miserable, and I am sure you cannot prove it till the day of 
Judgment, when we shall see how God will deal with them. ,, 
(God's Sovereignty and His Universal Love, $•<?., p. 38.) 

Dr. Thomas Pyle, Canon of Sarum, and author of 
"A Paraphrase on the Acts of the Apostles and the 



88 THE DOOM OF THE 

Epistles," devotes two of his Sixty Sermons to the theme, 
" Are there few that be saved ? " and says : — 

" Honest and well-meaning Christians, whose lot in life hap- 
pens to fall in an age of irreligion and vice, are wont to be 
disheartened at the woful prospect of the final state of their 
fellow-creatures. To think that the far greater part of their own 
species, of their own image, will utterly perish and be undone, 
is a most uncomfortable thought." (JPyWs Sermons, 1773, 
p. 438.) 

" From a right interpretation of these Scriptures, must appear 
the strange and wretched mistake of those Christians who 
ascribe the smallness of the number of such as they suppose will 
be saved, to some absolute and arbitrary decree of God, by 
which he selects a chosen few, and rejects all others, — an opinion 
against which men can never be too often cautioned ; since it 
effaces, and strikes out, every amiable character that is given us 
of God, and spoils the whole sense and purpose of our gospel 
account of rewards and punishments.' ' {Ibid., p. 442.) 

" These Scriptures never make, nor were ever designed to 
make, any absolute comparison between the numbers of such as 
will be finally saved, or finally lost. They only set forth the 
qualifications requisite to save all men ; namely, righteousness, 
and a watchful care, and a good improvement of the talents and 
graces committed to us all ; and the certain reasons why any 
will be left to perish, viz., wilful negligence, and deliberate 
vice." (Ibid., p. 428.) 

Bishop Colenso of Natal, after quoting passages from 
an American Missionary Report, in which the heathen are 
sorrowfully consigned to hell (see page 66, ante), enters 
" a solemn protest against such views, as utterly contrary 
to the whole spirit of the Gospel, — as obscuring the Grace 
of God and perverting his message of Love and Good- 
will to Man, and operating with most injurious and dead- 
ening effect, both on those who teach and on those who 
are taught." x 

1 Ten Weeks in Natal, p. 253. 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 89 

Rev. F. Nutcombe Oxenham, in his reply to Dr. Pusey 
already referred to, entitled, " Wha't is the Truth as to 
Everlasting Punishment," shows that the doctrine that 
the vast majority are to be lost has contributed very 
largely to undermine belief in endless punishment. This 
is one of the few things for which we have to thank this 
painful dogma : — 

" No doubt it is perfectly true, as Dr. Pusey intimates, that 
the thought of these vast multitudes * going away ' to suffer the 
' damnum ' which awaits all evil-doers, has contributed very 
largely to enforce a conviction that this 'damnum,' this punish- 
ment, will not be endless. It has done so, and it ought to have 
done so, and it always will do so ; and as long as reasonable 
Christian men, not driven by the exigencies of controversy to 
rely on idle and groundless sophistries, form their belief in this 
matter not simply, though primarily, on the testimony of Holy 
Scriptures, but also on the teaching of what they see in the world 
around them, they will continue to believe that ' the wicked,' 
those who die wicked, are many and not few, a vast multitude, — 
fearful to contemplate, whether they are actually a numerical 
majority of all mankind or not ; and they will not believe that 
all these are hopelessly and finally lost, that all these will be kept 
alive forever, simply to be ' punished with the devil.' " (p. 42.) 

Canon Farrar we may expect to find warmly denounc- 
ing the popular views : — 

" If the popular views be true, the multiplication of the human 
race is an unmitigated evil, for it serves mainly to people with 
agonizing myriads an endless hell. If the popular views be 
true — if most souls are lost — then to bring human beings into 
the world can be little short of a selfish crime." (Mercy and 
Judgment, p. 138.) 

Canon Farrar has not stated his protest any too 
strongly. 

CONGREGATIONAL PROTESTS. 

There have not been wanting Congregational ministers 
also who have disowned and rebuked this doctrine, though 
they have been obliged to deny Calvinism and oppose 



90 THE DOOM OF THE 

Congregational confessions of faith in order to do so. 
Rev. W. W. Patton, In an article on the True Theory of 
Missions, quotes the tenth chapter of the Westminster 
Confession, 1 which plumply consigns the whole heathen 
world to eternal destruction, and says : — 

" This is sufficiently positive, especially as it contradicts both 
our Saviour and the Apostle Paul. It represents heathen who 
live according to their light as ' much less ' able to be saved than 
men who hear the gospel and reject it, thus directly contradicting 
our Saviour, who declared that those who rejected his words 
would receive a heavier condemnation than even the depraved, 
unrepentant inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, or Tyre and 
Sidon (Matt. xi. 20-24). The 4 Confession of Faith ' declares 
the salvation of conscientious heathen to be * much less ' pos- 
sible than that of unbelieving hearers of the gospel; while Christ 
asserts, that even the most flagrant sinners of the heathen shall 
find it ' more tolerable ' in the day of Judgment, than such 
unbelievers. Equally at variance with the * Confession of 
Faith ' is the declaration of Paul in Rom. ii. 14, 26, 27, in which 
he shows how those 'having not the law may be a law unto 
themselves,' and how their ' uncircumcision shall be counted for 
circumcision.' " (Bibliotheca Sacra, July, 1858, p. 553.) 

Dr. Patton exposes the moral objections to this doctrine 
with considerable force : — 

" It is revolting to our moral sense. ... To assert gravelv, 
then, that the heathen who have never heard of Christ, are shut 
out from all possible hope of pardon and are not in a salvable 
position in their present circumstances, is to offend the moral 
sense of thoughtful men, as well as that of the common multi- 
tude. ... Such a theory practically denies the divine grace by 
suspending its exercise, so far as the heathen (the majority of the 
human race) are concerned, upon the action of those already 
enlightened. It declares that there is no possible mercy for the 
heathen unless Christians choose to carry the gospel to them. 
Does it seem rational, or in harmony with the universality and 
freedom of God's grace, that the only possibility of salvation 

1 Quoted on p. 41. 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 91 

for the mass of mankind should be suspended, not on anything 
within their control, but on the conduct of men on the opposite 
side of the globe? By such representations the minds of men 
are shocked, and a reaction takes place, which is unfavorable 
not only to the cause of missions, but to evangelical religion as 
well." (iWflf.,p, 554.) 

Rev. Washington Gladden, in a discourse printed in the 
Springfield Republican, March 15, 1879, after making 
various citations showing the harsh nature of Calvinism, 
said : — 

" Do not the citations that I have shown you, outlining the 
history of several doctrines, indicate that the men who framed 
and taught these doctrines must have been somewhat deficient 
in moral perception? Could their ideas of right and wrong have 
been very clear ? I bring against them no railing accusation. 
Out of their own mouths you have been permitted to judge 
them. I believe that most of them were good men, that many 
of them were brave, faithful, self-sacrificing, that we may find 
in their conduct worthy examples of purity and consecration; 
but I do not think that their moral standards, their notions of 
justice and righteousness, can be accepted at this day." 

OTHER PROTESTS. 

The Boston Sunday Herald (Jan. 7, 1883), in an article 
entitled " Hell-Fire Missions," says : — 

u The doom of the majority is one of those theological fictions 
which can be traced to a' strictly human origin, and is against 
the belief in a whole God, a whole Christ, and a true realization 
of the ends of human existence." 

The New York Independent, Jan. 16, 1883, admits that 
some way out of this doctrine must be found. In dis- 
cussing the question of probation after death, it says: — 

" Only one thing will persuade thinking men to adopt it ; 
and that will be the conviction that, without it, God's experiment 
of humanity is a failure, and that there are few that be saved. 
If it be really true that on this theory the great majority of the 



92 THE DOOM OF THE 

world are lost, if that be the outcome of the New England 
theology, as the Christian Register is now trying to show in reply 
to Dr. Withrow, then we may be sure that some escape from that 
conclusion will be sought, if not by adopting Dorner's theory, 
then by some improvement on the New England theology. We 
confess that we are startled by what Mr. Cook 1 yields as to the 
salvation of the heathen. He says, i Human nature is such, 
however, that only a few among millions do accept the essential 
Christ of conscience.' We do not see how that can be safely 
asserted." 

PRACTICAL FAILURE OF THE DOCTRINE. 

In addition to the admissions and testimonies we have 
presented to the moral and theoretical difficulties of the 
doctrine, a powerful argument against it is found in its 
inadequacy as a practical missionary motive. We have 
shown in the previous chapter how constantly the lost 
state of the vast majority of mankind has been urged as 
an incentive to missionary zeal. It has failed, however, 
to convert the heathen world, because the heathen cannot 
be made to realize their eternally lost condition. We 
acknowledge the great good foreign missions have accom- 
plished ; but what they have wrought for the elevation, 
instruction, and improvement of the temporal condition 
of the heathen, whatever they have done towards ushering 
in a nobler form of life, cannot be credited to the preach- 
ing of this doctrine. These incidental and practical results 
are to us the really valuable features of missionary work ; 
but they are not what has been primarily aimed at, and 
they could more easily have been achieved by more direct 
means. We have the confession of Dr. Hopkins, Dr. 
Goodwin, and a host of preachers, that all these results 
are inadequate compared with the salvation of the heathen 
soul. Nevertheless, after all that has been done, the hea- 
then are not converted; the vast majority, if Orthodoxy 

1 For Mr. Joseph Cook's attempted palliation of the doctrine, see 
paragraph on " The Essential Christ" in the succeeding chapter." 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 93 

be true, are still under this terrible curse, and daily going 
to a horrible doom. In a missionary sermon delivered in 
1863, Rev. Dr. Cleaveland, of New Haven, said: — 

" Fifty years ago the heathen were estimated, in round num- 
bers, at six hundred millions. You remember how those terrific 
figures, emblazoned before the eyes of Christendom, trumpeted 
in startling appeals from land to land, were employed by the 
Holy Ghost as one of the grand arguments that first roused 
the Church to the work of modern missions. Now let me ask, 
What, after a half-century of missionary labor, is the present 
number of the heathen? Can we report any material diminution 
in those dreadful figures ? Can we reduce them by so much as 
one million, or even half a million ? No. Thousands and tens 
of thousands have been brought to Christ, but there are six 
hundred millions still ! The banner of the cross has been planted 
in almost every pagan land, and many are the witnesses for Jesus 
among those idolaters. Still there are the countless masses of 
India, the untrodden depths of Africa, and the unexplored 
regions of China ; as if, in defiance of all our efforts, heathenism 
still glories in her proud temples, still whitens the earth with the 
bones of her victims, and darkens the sky with the smoke of 
her idolatrous sacrifices. . . . Glorious things have been 
achieved, it is true. But, after all, there are the six hundred 
millions still groping in the shadow of death, and perishing, 
twenty millions a year ! " 

We have already noted the confession of Rev. Dr. Kirk, 
" that more pagans are born, more die, in one year, than 
have been converted in over fifty years." 

But this motive has not only proved inadequate to con- 
vert the heathen ; it has also failed to impress Christians 
with its truthfulness. The Christian world has never 
acted as if it really believed this terrible doctrine. 'Now 
and then, under the influence of missionary meetings, 
when the lost state of the heathen has been presented as 
a motive with earnestness and power, spasmodic efforts 
have been made to conceive and act upon it as if it were 



94 THE DOOM OF THE 

a dreadful reality ; but such results have only been tem- 
porary. The Orthodox Christian world lives, for the 
most part, as if the doctrine were not true. The mis- 
sionaries themselves have again and again arraigned the 
indifference of Christians on this subject so thoroughly as 
to relieve us from the necessity of any such disagreeable 
task. Rev. George H. Pond, a Presbyterian missionary, 
shows how fully this idea has taken hold upon the 
churches : — 

" They often hear the Macedonian cry come up from the 
perishing millions, and they echo that cry in the ears of the 
churches at home, and still there is no response, or, if the churches 
return an answer, it is often only that the treasuries are empty, 
'or that the men cannot be found who are willing to go ; while it is 
well known that multitudes in these very churches are amassing 
wealth by hundreds, by thousands, and by tens of thousands, 
and that scores and hundreds of ministers even are seeking in 
vain to crowd themselves into the towns and cities of our own 
country, many of which are already more than supplied. Does 
not this state of things evince an astonishing amount of unbelief 
on the part of multitudes of the professed friends of Jesus and 
of his cause on earth? If not, what does it mean, when we see 
countless multitudes of our fellow-creatures groping their dark 
way down to the regions of death and hell, perishing for lack 
of knowledge, with no one to instruct them, while our churches 
are full of the professed followers of the toiling, suffering, self- 
sacrificing Saviour, who are loading, burdening, themselves with 
costly but useless and often disgusting ornaments to feed their 
vanity, and luxuriating in wealth while their Lord's treasury is 
empty, or only stingily supplied with a very small part of the 
unused surplus of the proud rich, mingled with the mites of 
the poor. ... 

" The churches do not believe the testimony of Scriptures touching 
this matter. They do not believe that the heathen will be turned 
into hell with all the nations that forget God. . . . They do not 
believe that the gospel can renovate and save the degraded and 
idolatrous nations, and that * there is no other name,' except the 
name of Jesus, ' given under heaven, whereby we must be 
saved.' " (Presbyterian Quarterly Review, Jan. 1861.) 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 95 

Such an arraignment of the Church from a Christian 
missionary is very significant. It shows what has always 
been apparent, that the professed belief of Christians and 
their actual belief on this subject are wider apart than 
the gulf which separated Dives from Lazarus. 

Bishop Colenso, himself a missionary to the heathen, 
rejecting this doctrine of tr^e damnation of the heathen, 
thus reproaches those who profess to believe it : — 

u Why! if such be indeed the condition of the heathen world, 
how can a Christian comfortably eat butter with his bread, ride 
in a carriage, wear a fine nap upon his coat, or enjoy one of the 
commonest blessings of daily life? What a monster of selfish- 
ness that man must be, who could endure the thought of ease, or 
enjoyment in body or soul, for himself, while such was the 
horrible destiny of so many millions of his fellow-men, simply 
because they knew not — had never heard of — that name of 
Love, and the Hope of Life Eternal. " (Ten Weeks in Natal, 
p. 253.) 



Attempted Mitigations. 

The preceding chapter has made it evident that there 
are many who are not insensible to the intellectual and 
ethical difficulties of this doctrine. With Dr. Barnes, Dr. 
Shedd, and Dr. Schaff, they admit the "dark and awful" 
character of a belief which consigns millions on millions 
of mankind to endless woe ; but accepting without ques- 
tion the premises on which the doctrine is founded, they 
see no way to avoid the logic of the doctrine itself. They 
therefore take refuge in an entrenchment to which Calvin- 
ism has often been obliged to retreat when hotly pressed 
by its opponents ; they hide themselves in the very dark- 
ness they have created, saying, with Dr. Schaff, it is " a 
deep and dark mystery;" or, with Dr. Albert Barnes, 
" It is all dark, dark to my soul, and I cannot disguise it." 



96 THE DOOM OF THE 

There are no manifestations of the strength of the reli- 
gious sentiment which are more sublime than when it 
throws itself back upon its trust in the mercy and good- 
ness of God, though it can see no intellectual or moral 
ground for affirming them. Such occasions may arise in 
individual experiences in practical life, when the view of 
God's dealings is limited to single and isolated examples, 
or confined to a small portion of time ; they do not arise, 
however, in any large and enlightened conception of God 
and of the universe which he governs. To take, as 
Calvinism asks us to do, a sweeping view of the whole 
universe, over immeasurable eternities, embracing the en- 
tire history of God's dealings with the whole human race, 
— not only here, but in the interminable future in which 
human destiny is conceived to be fixed, — and then to admit 
that our conception of God is one which cannot be recon- 
ciled with his mercy and goodness, is to put the religious 
sentiment to a greater strain than it can be expected to 
bear. However admirable the strength this sentiment 
has exhibited in coping with this difficulty, we deem it a 
far higher and purer exhibition of its authority, when, 
instead of meekly acknowledging such conceptions of the 
dark nature of God and of his government, it grandly 
refuses to accept the premises on which they are founded. 
To admit that God has so created and governed the 
world that the vast majority of the race are destined to 
perish, is a reflection upon the divine mercy and good- 
ness ; but also upon the divine wisdom. A farmer who, 
by his own inaction, should allow the greatest portion of 
his crop to rot when he might have gathered it all, would 
be considered a poor farmer. A king who should so 
manage his realm as to involve the far greater part of his 
subjects in hopeless misery, would be considered a very 
unskilful ruler. If we knew, also, that it was in his power, 
by a simple royal mandate, to grant to every one of his 
subjects the happiness enjoyed by a few, we should think 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 97 

he had a bad heart if he did not issue it. It is no won- 
der, then, that Calvinism has often writhed under the 
reproaches which have been cast upon it for teaching the 
damnation of the majority, and that it has sought in 
various ways to soften the harshness of the doctrine. 
These earnest attempts show the modifications which 
have taken place in Calvinism itself. It has widely 
departed from its historic and original form. The cur- 
rent Calvinism of the day is at variance with its ancient 
standards. We have already referred to the change of 
view which has taken place in regard to infant damnation. 
Early Calvinism asserted it ; modern Calvinism repudiates 
it, though it still holds to creeds which naturally imply it. 
These departures from early Calvinism are the result of 
the pressure of a nobler view of Christianity, and the 
development of a higher form of civilization. As Chan- 
ning well said : " Calvinism has to contend with foes more 
formidable than theologians ; with foes from whom it 
cannot shield itself in mystery and metaphysical subtili- 
ties — we mean with the progress of the human mind, 
and with the progress of the spirit of the gospel." * 

The expedients which have been invented to save Cal- 
vinism have acted powerfully to disintegrate it. The 
original system was mercilessly logical. Having laid 
down his foundation premises, Calvin had the courage to 
build his system upon them. He drew a straight line from 
premise to conclusion. Modern Calvinism pretends to 
accept the premises, but seeks to avoid the conclusions. 
The line it draws is not straight, but sinuous. It falters, 
wavers, and evades. The beautiful logical symmetry of 
the system is destroyed. Modern Calvinism is inconsist- 
ent and contradictory. It seeks to read new meanings 
into old documents. It invents explanations, probabilities, 
and mitigations. Much of the strength of modern Cal- 
vinism is exerted in apologizing for its parentage, or in 

1 Moral Argument against Calvinism, p. 468. 

7 



98 THE DOOM OF THE 

the more fruitless task of trying to build a sightly and 
hospitable structure on the old foundation. Nevertheless, 
though inconsistent, illogical, and inartistic, there is more 
heart in the derived form than there was in the original. 
Early high Calvinism had looked so steadily at the face 
of its terrible Gorgon-God that, like those who gazed 
upon Medusa, it had well-nigh been turned into stone, 
But that Gorgonian head has lost much of its power to 
petrify human sensibility. There is a new leaven working 
to-day ; and may we not hope that eventually the new 
leaven may purge out that which is old ? 

What now are some of the methods with which modern 
Orthodoxy seeks to avoid the reproach of this doctrine 
that the majority are lost? 

THE INFANTILE QUIBBLE. 

It is argued by some that as Protestants, both Calvin- 
ists and Arminians, now generally admit that all dying 
in infancy are saved, therefore, as the majority of the race 
die young, the majority of the race will be saved. This 
position is taken in defiance of the Westminster and the 
Augsburg confessions, both of which, historically inter- 
preted, teach the damnation of infants. The numerical 
quibble affords no relief, however, from the moral diffi- 
culties of the doctrine; for it still remains true, according 
to Orthodoxy, that the vast majority of the adult portion 
of mankind are lost. 

We are quite content to let our indictment of Calvin- 
istic Orthodoxy rest upon the doctrines which it still 
teaches; we do not upbraid it for those it has outgrown. 
It still teaches that the vast majority of the adult popu- 
lation of the globe are doomed to irretrievable misery. It 
is this doctrine that we urge it to repudiate as blasphe- 
mous and untrue. 

Canon Farrar was met with this quibble. He says : l — 

1 Mercy and Judgment, p. 140, 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 99 

" Even in some of the so-called answers to my sermons, the 
difficulty was only met by the argument that ' the majority 
of mankind die in infancy and therefore that the majority of 
mankind would be saved. ' It is not worth while to argue with 
writers who take refuge in quibbles. By the ' majority of man- 
kind,' I mean, as all serious writers have meant, the majority 
of those who have attained to years of discretion. But by using 
such an argument these writers imply their belief, and it is still 
the common opinion of those who claim to be ' orthodox,' — too 
often at the expense of ' speaking deceitfully for God,' — that 
most men * perish ; ' and by this they mean that most men pass 
after death 'into a life of endless torments.' They have not 
only held this, but further, — that the vast majority of Christians 
also pass after death into endless torments." {Mercy and Judg- 
ment, p. 140.) 

THE MILLENNIAL HOPE. 

Another attempted mitigation is the millennial hope. 
This has been a source of consolation to many. It is the 
faith that ultimately the whole world will be converted ; 
and, when all are gathered in, " the number of the lost 
will be inconsiderable as compared with the whole num- 
ber of the saved." 

Thus the late Dr. Charles Hodge says, in his Commen- 
tary on Romans v. 20 : — 

" Since the half of mankind die in infancy, and, according 
to the Protestant doctrine, are heirs of salvation; and since, in 
the future state of the Church, the knowledge of the Lord is to 
cover the earth, — we have reason to believe that the lost shall 
bear to the saved no greater proportion than the inmates of a 
prison do to the mass of the community." 

Rev. Albert Barnes, whose pathetic admission we have 
published in a preceding chapter, found comfort in the 
same view, which may be found in his Commentary on 
Isaiah liii. 11 : — 

" It is morally certain that a large portion of the race, taken 
as a whole, will enter into heaven. Hitherto the number has been 
small. The great mass have rejected him and have been lost. But 



100 THE DOOM OF THE 

there are brighter times before the church and the world. The 
pure gospel of the Redeemer is yet to spread around the globe, 
and it is yet to become, and to be for ages, the religion of the 
world. Age after age is to roll on when all shall know him and 
obey him; and in those future times, what immense multitudes 
shall enter into heaven. So that it may yet be seen, that the 
number of those who will be lost from the whole human family, 
compared with those who will be saved, will be no greater in 
proportion than the criminals in a well-organized community 
who are imprisoned are, compared with the number of obedient, 
virtuous, and peaceful citizens." 

This is the single ray of light on this subject that seemed 
to come to Dr. Barnes. It is a new evidence of the depth 
of the darkness which oppressed him, when he was forced 
to take comfort in this millennial device. In a recent arti- 
cle in the Christian Intelligencer? Rev. William Rankin 
Duryee, D.D., presents this same hope. Rev. S. W. 
Boardman, D.D., in a letter to the writer, says : — 

"It is undoubtedly the opinion of most Orthodox Christians 
that the great majority of the human race, who have as yet died in 
mature years, are lost, but their hope is that when the whole 
race shall have been brought into existence, and human history 
on earth be completed, the great majority of all will have been 
saved." 

It is to be noted, in the first place, that this is an individ- 
ual opinion. It is not supported by the Church creeds ; and 
those who, like Dr. Withrow, insist that their orthodoxy 
shall be interpreted only through the standards, cannot 
consistently appeal to it. Dr. Schaff says that this opinion 
— that the number of those who are ultimately lost is very 
inconsiderable as compared with the whole number of the 
saved — " w T ould be preposterous in the Augustinian and 
Roman Catholic systems." We may acid with confidence, 
that it would be equally preposterous in the Calvinistic 
system. The straits to which that system has been 

1 " Quantity in Salvation/' Christian Intelligencer, Feb. 14, 1883. 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 101 

driven by Arminianism are illustrated in this curious 
attempt to escape from one of the logical consequences 
of Calvinism. 

But let us examine the implications of this millennial 
device, and see how much relief it really affords. 

In the first place it concedes that, up to the present 
time at least, and until some remote future, the doctrine 
we arraign is true. This concession is not merely left to 
be inferred. Dr. Barnes and Dr. Boardman, with the 
score of authorities previously quoted, directly express it. 
" Hitherto," says Dr. Barnes, "the number has been small. 
The great mass have rejected him and been lost." The 
hope is entertained that at some future time the propor- 
tions may be reversed. This hope for the future does 
nothing to relieve the terrible blackness of the present 
and the past. It does not relieve the condition of the 
vast majority who have thus far been damned ; it does 
not relieve of its blackness the character of the God who 
has been guilty of damning them. Though it alters the 
proportion, it does not lessen in any degree the absolute 
number of the lost. That number is still left so great as 
to be positively inconceivable. In his sermon before the 
American Board, Rev.- Dr. Skinner, of the Presbyterian 
Church, calculated that the heathen had been passing to 
their eternal destiny, strangers to the influence of God's 
recovering grace, at the rate of 20,000,000 a year. 20,000,- 
000 a year is a small estimate of the number of those 
heathen who have died without accepting the gospel ; 
but, even at this rate, the accumulation is frightful. 
20,000,000, multiplied by 1882, gives a total of 37,640,000,- 
000 souls in hell since the beginning of the Christian era 
alone. Of the millions who were damned before it, Dr. 
Skinner makes no estimate. How long it will be before 
the whole world is converted we cannot tell ; but, at the 
present slow rate of progress, it must take thousands of 
years, and the American Board estimates that 500,000,000 



102 THE DOOM OF THE 

heathen go to hell every thirty years. Confining ourselves, 
however, simply to the Christian era, we have Dr. Skin- 
ner's authority for saying that, at the present date, there 
are 37,640,000,000 souls in the prison hell of which Dr. 
Hodge speaks, and they are all doomed to everlasting 
woe ! 

The prospect that the entire world will be converted to 
Orthodox Christianity seems at present very remote. So 
long as it preaches such doctrines as this, we cannot be 
sorry at the delay. " We hear much," said Dr. Channing, 
" of efforts to spread the gospel ; but Christianity is gain- 
ing more by the removal of degrading errors, than it would 
by armies of missionaries who should carry with them a 
corrupted form of the religion." 1 Nevertheless, accord- 
ing to the common Orthodox view, every year of delay 
adds "twenty millions a year" to the number of heathen 
in hell ! Rev. Gordon Hall, a missionary in 1812, supposed 
a hundred years — "a longer time," he said, "than is al- 
lowed by the ablest commentators " — would pass away 
before the introduction of the millennium. And then, in 
making an appeal to the churches, he added this signifi- 
cant question. "But what must become of the souls who 
are to appear on the earth between this and the millen- 
nium? To this momentous question Orthodoxy answers, 
The vast majority are doomed to endless woe? And Dr. 
Barnes and Dr. Hodge add a tearful "Amen." 

All the comfort, therefore, that can be extracted from 
this millennial hope, is the thought that God's government, 
and the scheme of redemption, is not such a practical fail- 
ure as it seems to be, on the supposition that only a small 
fraction of the human family will enjoy its blessings. 
The harvest of saved souls, it assumes, is larger than the 
lost, and therefore the divine husbandry is vindicated. 
The vindication is only numerical. It is not moral. The 

1 "Moral Argument against Calvinism." Works (new edition), 
p. 468. 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 103 

fact still remains, according to Orthodoxy, that millions — » 
yea, billions on billions — of lost souls have been consigned 
to eternal damnation ; the fact still remains that there are 
"twenty million souls" going to hell every year. God's 
moral government cannot be vindicated by a system which 
confines the blessings of salvation to a hypothetical multi- 
tude, in a remotely future era, while the vast majority of 
those who have lived for nineteen centuries on the globe 
are forever lost. This palliation is but another form of 
the Calvinistic doctrine of election. God chooses the mil- 
lennial age to display his glory, and saves the nations in 
bulk ; he reprobates all preceding ages, except the small 
remnant of elected individuals that are saved from the 
great mass. God becomes generous, merciful, and kind 
in the millennial age ; but in all preceding ages he is un- 
merciful and unkind, — a Shylock sticking to the bond, 
clamoring for the covenanted pound of flesh, and willing 
to take it not only from Antonio, — Adam, — but from all 
his descendants. 

Dr. William Rankin Duryee, although urging this mil- 
lennial mitigation, is not without a natural suspicion of its 
insufficiency. He says : 1 — 

14 If the men who cherish infidel or restorationist doctrine still 
affirm that even such hopeful probabilities do not relieve the 
subject of its sorrowful darkness, the believer throws the whole 
matter on God, and will not exhaust his strength in vain ques- 
tionings or vainer feelings. The Bible says there is some sin 
from which is no redemption. As far as sentiment goes, one 
soul eternally lost is as painful to contemplate as ten millions of 
souls. And the sentiment, which sorrows over what God reveals 
as His own will, is simply maudlin." 

In his distrust and condemnation of the sentiments, 
Dr. Duryee showed himself a Calvinist of the old-time 
school. It has been the reproach of Calvinism that it 
has dishonored the sentiments, especially the sentiments 

1 Christian Intelligencer, February, 1883. 



104 THE DOOM OF THE 

of mercy and love, which are most outraged by this doc- 
trine. And now with this horrible spectacle of millions 
of doomed souls before us, we are coolly told that " the 
sentiment, which sorrows over what God reveals as his 
own will, is simply maudlin ! " This was the reproachful 
sentimentality that Jesus showed when he mourned over 
Jerusalem, and when he pathetically wept at the tomb of 
Lazarus. What maudlin sentiment that David should 
sorrow for Absalom ; or that Paul, yearning over Israel, 
should be willing to be accursed for his brethren and 
kinsmen according to the flesh ! 

The remarkable confession of Dr. Barnes, which we 
print in the preceding chapter, furnishes one type of 
modern Calvinism, that which reveals the power, depth, 
and authority of the sentiments. Dr. Duryee's article 
shows another type, that which suppresses or ignores 
them. If the latter type has the impassivity of stoicism, 
the first has the virtue of being humane. 

The ease with which Dr. Duryee quenches the senti- 
ments, and disposes of the mistaken compassion to which 
the human heart is prone at spectacles of woe, is seen still 
further in the following passage : — 

" All kinds of compassion are not the types of the Divine 
compassion. There is a sympathy with sin which may easily be 
mistaken for sympathy with sorrow. There is a sympathy with 
those whose punishment is deserved, which God and just men 
alike despise. When the Christian finds out at last who are in 
the regions of despair, and what they are there meeting, we are 
very sure he will neither be affected by the number, nor by the dura- 
tion of their punishment ." 

Those Christians who have not entirely lost the 
"maudlin" sentiments of mercy and love will not need 
any refutation of this passage. Believing, as they do, 
that the sympathy which arises from these sentiments is 
never despicable, and that a condemnation of sin is quite 
compatible with a sympathy for the sinner, they will be 



MAJOEITY OF MANKIND. 105 

more concerned to ask what apology can be made for Dr. 
Duryee, for making in the year 1883 such extraordinary 
statements. Dr. Duryee would probably scorn any such 
service, and thus make the need of an apology only more 
apparent. 

In defence of his position it may be said that the indif- 
ference of Christians in this life to the eternal woe of the 
heathen, when they have some power to prevent it, may 
furnish reason for the inference that Christians in heaven 
will be much more indifferent to such misery when they 
have no power to arrest it. But the indifference of 
Christians in this life is not a virtue. We agree with Dr. 
Skinner, Mr. Pond, 1 Bishop Colenso, and a host of other 
missionaries, that it is only a reproach if the doctrine be 
true. We take it as an evidence, however, that the 
doctrine is not true, since it is not possible for humanity 
to act as if it were true. 

Another apology — not wholly sufficient, we grant — 
for Dr. Duryee's statement may be found in the fact that 
it is not new. Jonathan Edwards, Nathanael Emmons, 
Andrew Welwood, and others have presented its grate- 
ful and benumbing consolations to the saints with equal 
positiveness, and with more enthusiasm and power. 

Dr. Emmons has told us that " We know that one part 
of the business of the blessed is to celebrate the doctrine 
of reprobation." 2 

Jonathan Edwards considered the subject of so much 
importance that he devoted an entire sermon to its devel- 
opment. The sermon bears this comforting title : " The 
End of the Wicked Contemplated by the Righteous ; or, 
the Torments of the Wicked in Hell no Occasion of Grief 
to the Saints in Heaven." In this sermon Edwards first 
depicts the horrors of bell: — 

1 See his admission quoted in the previous chapter, p. 94. 

2 Works, vol. ii. p. 402. 



106 THE DOOM OF THE 

1 ' The miseries of the damned in hell will be inconceivably 
great. When they shall come to bear the wrath of the Almighty 
poured out upon them without mixture, and executed upon them 
without pity or restraint, or any mitigation; it will doubtless 
cause anguish and horror and amazement, vastly beyond all the 
sufferings and torments that ever any man endured in this 
world; yea, beyond all extent of our words or thoughts.' ' 
(Works, vol. iv. p. 289, Worcester ed.) 

Then he shows by contrast the joy of the saints in 
glory : — 

1 ' The saints in glory will see this and be far more sensible of 
it than now we can possibly be. Xhey will be far more sensible 
how dreadful the wrath of God is, and will better understand 
how terrible the sufferings of the damned are ; yet this will be no 
occasion of grief to them. They will not be sorry for the damned ; 
it will cause no uneasiness or dissatisfaction to them ; but on the 
contrary, when they have this sight, it will excite them to joyful 
praises. 

" The damned and their misery, their sufferings and the 
wrath of God poured out upon them, will be an occasion of joy 
to them. ..." (p. 290.) 

To make the application of the sermon more effective, 
Edwards paints a fearful picture of the separations that 
must take place at the last day : — 

* ' How will you bear to see your parents, who in this life had 
so dear an affection for you, now without any love to you, 
approving the sentence of condemnation, when Christ shall with 
indignation bid you depart, wretched, cursed creatures into 
eternal burnings ? How will you bear to see and hear them 
praising the Judge, for his justice exercised in pronouncing this 
sentence, and hearing it with holy joy in their countenances, 
and shouting forth the praises and hallelujahs of God and 
Christ on that account ? 

"When they shall see what manifestations of amazement 
there will be in you at the hearing of this dreadful sentence, 
and that every syllable of it pierces you like a thunderbolt, and 
sinks you into the lowest depths of horror and despair ; when 
they shall behold you with a frighted, amazed countenance, 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 107 

trembling and astonished, and shall hear you groan and gnash 
your teeth ; these things will not move them at all to pity you, 
but you will see them with a holy joy fulness in their counte- 
nances, and with songs in their mouths. When they shall see 
you turned away and beginning to enter into the great furnace, 
and shall see how you shrink at it, and hear how you shriek and 
cry out ; yet they will not be at all grieved for you, but at the 
same time you will hear from them renewed praises and halle- 
lujahs for the true and righteous judgments of God in so dealing 
with you." (p. 296.) 

" As to those who are damned in hell, the saints in glory are 
not concerned for their welfare, and have no love nor pity towards 
them; and if you perish hereafter, it will be an occasion of joy 
to all the godly." (p. 297.) 

In another discourse Edwards represents the happiness 
of the saints as greatly heightened by the contemplation of 
the eternal misery of the lost : — 

" The sight of hell torments will exalt the happiness of the 
saints for ever. It will not only make them more sensible of 
the greatness and freeness of the grace of God in their happi- 
ness; but it will really make their happiness the greater, as it 
will make them more sensible of their own happiness; it will 
give them a more lively relish of it ; it will make them prize it 
more. When they see others, who were of the same nature, and 
born under the same circumstances, plunged in such misery, 
and they so distinguished, O, it will make them sensible how 
happy they are. A sense of the opposite misery, in all cases, 
greatly increases the relish of any joy or pleasure." {Sermon 
on the Eternity of Hell Torments, Works, vol. iv. p. 276.) 

In his rhapsodical book entitled, "Meditations repre- 
senting a Glimpse of Glory : or, A Gospel-Discovery of 
Emmanuel's Land," x Andrew Welwood, a Scotch layman, 
vividly describes the joys of the saints in witnessing the 
tortures of the damned : — 

1 The date of the first edition we do not know. An American 
reprint was made in 1744 ; and editions were published in Pittsburg 
in 1824 and in London in 1839. It has undoubtedly been a very 
popular book. 



108 THE DOOM OF THE 

11 What joy! to behold Truth vindicated from all the horrid 
Aspersions of Hellish Monsters. I 'm overjoyed in hearing the 
everlasting Howlings of the Haters of the Almighty; what a 
pleasant Melody are they in mine Ears? O eternal Hallelujahs 
to Jehovah and the Lamb! O sweet! sweet! My Heart is 
satisfied. We committed our Cause to thee, that judgeth right- 
eously; and behold, thou hast fully pleaded our Cause, and shalt 
make the Smoke of their Torment for ever and ever to ascend 
in our Sight." (p. 107, ed. 1744.) 

Again the rapturous author says : — 
" The beholding of the smoke of your torments is a passing 
delectation." (p. 109.) 

That this doctrine which Welwood assisted to popu- 
larize in England is not wholly extinct there is shown by 
the testimony of Dr. Momerie, embodied in the following 
paragraph from the London Inquirer of March 10, 

1883: — 

" We are sometimes told that the hideous doctrine of Eternal 
Torment is dying out, at least in its more repulsive aspects. 
The Rev. Dr. Momerie, Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in 
King's College, London, and one of the Select Preachers before 
the University of Cambridge, gives unimpeachable testimony 
that we are apt to overrate the progress of liberal sentiments in 
other churches. In his recent work on * The Basis of Religion ' 
he says that only a year or two ago he heard a clergyman deliver 
himself from the pulpit as follows: 'My brethren, you may 
imagine that when you look down from heaven, and see your 
acquaintances and friends and relatives in hell, your happiness 
will be somewhat marred. But no ! You will then be so puri- 
fied and perfected that, as you gaze on that sea of suffering, it 
will only increase your joy.' For our part, we should prefer hell 
itself to a heaven where such hellish joy would be possible." 

Unfortunately for the progress of liberal ideas we can- 
not affirm, as we should be happy to do, that this view 
of the indifference of the saints in heaven to the tor- 
tures of the damned in hell is obsolete in this country. 
Dr. Duryee has revived it anew, and presents it as a 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 109 

merciful mitigation of this doctrine of the doom of the 
majority. But it is a mitigation which does not mitigate. 
It does not relieve the damned, but only the elect. At 
the best it is a selfish view. The saints are fearful lest 
their happiness in heaven should be disturbed by the 
proximity of hell. " No," says Dr. Duryee, " when the 
Christian finds out at last who are in the regions of de- 
spair [parents or children, brothers or sisters, wives, 
mothers, or friends we have loved on earth], and what 
they are there meeting [tortures so horrible that no 
tongue can describe them, and so lasting that eternity 
cannot exhaust them], we are very sure he will neither 
be affected by the number, nor by the duration of their 
punishment" 

Whatever the effect of Dr. Duryee's attempted apology 
may be upon the school of Calvinists to which he belongs, 
we rejoice to believe that there are a vast number of 
Christians who still retain a sufficient amount of human- 
ity to feel that this attempted mitigation only adds a 
new horror to those it seeks to relieve. It is the doctrine 
of annihilation applied to heaven instead of to hell — the 
annihilation of the sentiments of mercy and benevolence. 
The wicked are allowed to retain these sentiments in hell ; 
Dives is represented as exercising them ; but for the 
comfort of the saints they are extinguished in heaven. 
This view of heaven makes it, morally considered, several 
degrees lower than hell. 

PROBATION AFTER DEATH. 

Whatever comfort the doctrine of the annihilation of 
the sentiments may afford to ransomed or expectant 
saints, it does not relieve the character of God of the 
reproach of partiality and injustice. Dr. Schaff, after 
admitting the objections, adds: — 

11 The only solution seems to lie either in the Quaker 
doctrine of universal light — that is, an uncovenanted offer of 



110 THE DOOM OF THE 

salvation to all men in this earthly life — or an extension of the 
period of saving grace beyond death till the final judgment for 
those (and for those only) who never had an opportunity in this 
world to accept or reject the gospel salvation. But the former 
view implies a depreciation of the visible Church, the ministry 
of the gospel, and the sacraments. The latter would require a 
liberal reconstruction of the traditional doctrine of the middle 
state, such as no Orthodox church — in the absence of clear Scrip- 
ture light on this mysterious subject, and in view of probable 
abuse — would be willing to admit in its confessional teaching, 
even if theological exegesis should be able to produce a better 
agreement than now exists on certain disputed passages of the 
New Testament and the doctrine of Hades.' ' (Creeds of 
Christendom, vol. i. p. 793.) 

Of these solutions, that of probation after death is being 
earnestly presented by the more liberal section of the 
Orthodox body. The active discussion that has been held 
has revealed the fact that there is a growing number who 
find relief in the thought that those who do not have an 
opportunity to receive the gospel here, may have it offered 
to them hereafter. This view, if generally accepted, 
would not relieve the subject of its darkest and worst 
feature; but it would certainly lessen its horror. It 
assumes that every one must have an opportunity to 
receive the gospel before he can justly be punished for 
rejecting it. It does not deny the dogma of endless 
misery; but it refuses to confine to this life the pro- 
bation which human souls are supposed to undergo. It 
thus relieves the character of God of the charge of 
damning the heathen and all others who die in ignorance 
of the gospel. It throws some rays of divine mercy 
across the grave. It is a reaction against the severity of 
Calvinism. Arminianism has less need of this mitigation, 
because it commits to the divine mercy and judgment 
those whom the gospel has not reached. On the other 
hand, this theory of probation after death is an improve- 
ment on the assumption held alike by Arminians and 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. Ill 

Calvinists, that the destiny of the soul is fixed at death 
for all eternity. 

The movement in favor of this doctrine is strongest in 
the Congregational body. Rev. Newman Smyth, D.D., 
of New Haven, and Professor Egbert Smyth of Andover, 
have been prominently before the public as its defenders. 
Mr. Joseph Cook, Professor Park, Dr. Goodwin, and many 
others have assailed it. The prolonged discussion it has 
received has helped to make the doctrine familiar and 
tolerable to many people ; but it cannot be said to have 
received any general acceptance. The liberal element in 
the Congregational body is making a brave fight to estab- 
lish it. As a more merciful view of the divine govern- 
ment, its general adoption would be a grateful sign of 
progress. It is founded on noble conceptions of the 
divine justice and mercy. Once let such conceptions 
have full freedom, and the dogma of endless punishment 
will eventually be carried away like a rotten pier before 
a spring flood. 

But while welcoming any extension of the sentiments 
of justice and mercy to theological discussions, we believe 
it is safest to found them on correct premises and to extend 
them on right lines. It is an essential defect of the move- 
ment in favor of probation after death, that it accepts 
most of the false premises on which Orthodoxy is built, — 
man's ruined nature, the necessity of an atonement, and 
the certainty of endless punishment for those who reject 
the gospel. We do not believe that any permanent relief 
can be obtained so long as these premises are admitted. 
Nor can we agree that this life, or any limited period in the 
next, is to be considered as a state of probation. Life is 
not a probation; it is a discipline, a school for character, 
a field for growth. 

The only satisfaction, therefore, that we have in observ- 
ing the growth of the doctrine of probation after death, 
is in the hope kindled that it may lead to something 
better. 



112 THE DOOM OF THE 



THE ESSENTIAL CHEIST. 



Mr. Joseph Cook, having undertaken in his Monday- 
Lectures to attack " Probation after Death," attempted to 
show that the Orthodox view of God's dealing with the 
heathen did not require this expedient. " God is imma- 
nent in the moral nature of every man," says Mr. Cook, 
" and whoever permanently accepts or rejects the inner- 
most voice of conscience, accepts or rejects the essential 
Christ." This sounds very liberal and very plausible. It 
is precisely what Unitarians and other liberals have main- 
tained for years. Paul stated it much better than Mr. 
Cook, without the possible confusion which may come 
from the term essential Christ. " God [who] will render 
to every man according to his deeds : . . . tribulation 
and anguish upon every soul of man that doeth evil, . . . 
but glory, honor, and peace to every man that worketh 
good." This is sound doctrine, and at the outset Mr. 
Cook seems to believe in it. To save his Orthodoxy, 
however, which would be practically destroyed by such an 
admission, he makes the following qualification : " Human 
nature is such, however, that only a few among millions 
do accept the essential Christ of conscience. A knowledge 
of the character, life, and death of the historic Christ must 
therefore be carried to the heathen and to the whole 
world." We do not wonder that the Independent was 
" startled " at this statement ; we wonder that Mr. Cook 
was not startled by it himself. He has unwittingly drawn 
up an indictment, not against the heathen, but against 
the God who made them. If God has so constructed 
human nature that it cannot obey the laws of life he has 
prescribed for it, then the divine wisdom and goodness 
are at once impeached. In casting into the bottomless pit 
the clay which he has tried to form in his own image, the 
Divine Potter simply shows the failure of his own handi- 
work. Mr. Cook opens the door to the heathen, only to 
slam it in their faces when they try to enter. He prac- 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 113 

tically records himself as one who believes in the damna- 
tion of the majority. The " fair chance " he offers to the 
heathen to get into heaven is considerably less than they 
would have of reaching the opposite shore in safety, if 
required individually to cross Niagara on a tight-rope. 



VI. 

Unmitigated Features. 

The palliations we have considered are of interest 
mainly as showing the need that is felt among a large 
class for some relief from the distressing features of this 
doctrine. None of them, however, furnish a relief that 
is adequate. They have not yet been accepted by Ortho- 
doxy. They are arguments for the revision of the historic 
creeds, but the desired revision has not been made. 
Merely to file off the rough edges of the old creeds will 
not suffice. The objections we urge are not merely against 
Orthodox standards, but against the Orthodox system 
which they represent. That system, as it is now held and 
taught, cannot be reconciled with the justice, goodness, 
and mercy of God. That it is no malice which prompts 
this statement may be seen from the Evangelical admis- 
sions, protests, and attempted mitigations which we have 
brought together in the two preceding chapters. 

These objections are not simply metaphysical or logical ; 
they are above all things ethical. The ethical basis on 
which the old theology was constructed is one which has 
been outgrown. Civilization and society have advanced, 
but theology still clings to its mediaeval God. Nothing 
but the voice of authority, urged as the voice of God him- 
self, is able to support a theistic conception which would 
otherwise be promptly rejected as irrational and unjust. 
These ethical difficulties are not confined to this special 
dogma ; they belong to the whole theological system upon 



114 THE DOOM OF THE 

which it is built. But they appear conspicuously in two or 
three aspects of this doctrine ; namely, in the relation 
which God is supposed to hold to the number, the character, 
and the state of the doomed. 



1. The Number of the Doomed. 

Orthodoxy teaches that God "passes by" the far larger 
portion of the human race in conferring the blessings of 
salvation, and deliberately remands them to a fate from 
which his love and mercy might have saved them. We 
say "passes by," for that is the expression used in the 
Westminster Confession: "God was pleased, according to 
the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he 
extendeth or withholcleth mercy as he pleaseth, for the 
glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass 
by the rest of mankind, and to ordain them to dishonor 
and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious jus- 
tice." This " glorious [?] justice " operates to condemn to 
death the great majority of the heathen world, without 
even giving them a chance to accept the gospel which 
would save them. As one of the most prominent of 
Orthodox theologians, Dr. Philip Schaff, says, in a pas- 
sage to which we have previously referred : — 

11 Everybody must admit that the vast majority of mankind, 
no worse by nature than the rest, and without personal guilt, 
are born, and grow up in heathen darkness, out of the reach of 
means of grace, and are thus, as far as we know, actually 
1 passed by ' in this world. No Orthodox system can logically 
reconcile this stubborn and awful fact with the universal love and 
impartial justice of God." (Creeds of Christendom, vol. i. 
p. 793.) 

Dr. Channing, in considering this doctrine, that "the 
vastly greater portion of the human race is abandoned by 
God," was moved to earnest remonstrance: — 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 115 

14 It is the doctrine of the mass of Christians even now, that 
the heathen are the objects of God's wrath. All who live and 
die beyond the sound of the Gospel, it is thought, are doomed 
to endless perdition. On this ground indeed it is that most 
missionary enterprises rest. We are called upon to send the 
Gospel where it is not preached, because men conceive that, 
beyond the borders of Christendom, God is an implacable Judge; 
because no other parts of the earth are believed to hold commu- 
nication with heaven ; because it is feared that the human being, 
whose fate it is to be born a heathen, carries to the grave an 
inherited curse that will never be repealed. Well do I remem- 
ber the shock once received from reading a missionary address, 
in which the speaker computed the thousands of the heathen 
world who would die during the few hours of the meeting; and 
he asked his hearers to listen in thought to their shrieks as they 
descended into hell. But how can a sane man credit, for an 
instant, that the vastly greater portion of the human race is 
abandoned by God? If Christianity did actually thus represent 
the character of God, we might well ask what right we have to 
hold or to diffuse such a religion. For among all the false gods 
of Heathenism, can one be found more unrighteous and more 
cruel than the Deity whom such a system offers as an object for 
our worship? But the Christian Religion nowhere teaches this 
horrible faith. And still more, no man in hfs heart does or can 
believe such an appalling doctrine. Utter it in words men may; 
but human nature forbids them to give it inward assent. Were 
the Christians who profess it deliberately to consider what such 
a doctrine means, and bring it home to themselves as a reality, 
— could they distinctly once conceive that every hour, by day 
and night, thousands of their fellow-beings are plunged by the 
never-ceasing anger of God into an abyss of endless woe, — how 
could they endure even to exist? They would look on this world 
as a hell, and long to escape from the sway of its merciless 
despot. No! The human heart is a far better teacher than 
these gloomy systems of theology. In its secret depth it believes, 
what perhaps it dares not to put into words, in God's Impartial, 
Equitable, Universal, and Parental Love." (The Universal 
Father, Sec. I. 4.) 

In 1837 the New School Presbyterians of this country, 



116 THE DOOM OF THE 

in the so-called Auburn Declaration, adopted the follow- 
ing article : — 

"While repentance for sin and faith in Christ are indispensa- 
ble to salvation, all who are saved are indebted, from first to 
last, to the grace and Spirit of God. And the reason that God 
does not save all is not that he wants the power to do it, but that 
in his wisdom he does not see Jit to exert that power farther than he 
actually does" (Schaif 's Creeds of Christendom, vol. iii. p. 779.) 

Channing has not stated more strongly, in an equal 
number of words, the moral difficulties of Orthodoxy, than 
they are stated by Dr. SchaiF in the passage above, or 
than they are unconsciously revealed in the Auburn 
Declaration. How can we believe in the goodness and 
mercy and justice of God, and yet suppose that those who 
have had no opportunity to hear the gospel are to be 
banished to eternal night ? God knows their condition; 
there is room enough in heaven for them all ; he can save 
them if he will ; it is not possible, says Orthodoxy, for 
them to be saved without him. Nevertheless God 
passes them by without mercy, and surrenders them to 
an endless misery to which he alone has ordained them. 

The old Calvinistic doctrine of reprobation, in which 
Emmons and Edwards delighted, that God positively 
reprobated to death those whom he did not choose to save, 
is not held so sternly by modern Calvinists. They are 
content to say that God chooses some to salvation, and 
passes by or leaves the rest in the ruin in which the fall 
of Adam has plunged them, " not that he wants the 
power " to save them, " but that in his wisdom he does not 
see fit to exert that power further than he actually does." 
The trouble with this attempted alleviation is that it softens 
the will of God without softening his heart. The old 
Calvinistic God exerted his power; he cast souls into hell. 
The new God withholds his power, and they slide in by 
themselves. There is little choice between such descrip- 
tions of God. The immoral grandeur of the first can 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 117 

be ns easily defended as the immoral languor of the 
second. 

Is this the result of the teachings of Jesus Christ ? Is 
this a fair representation of his view of the Father? 
There is a little story which Jesus himself told, which 
shows how he would have regarded this view of God : — 

11 A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho; 
and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him, and 
departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance a certain priest 
was going down that way^ and when he saw him, he passed by on 
the other side. And in like manner a Levite also, when he 
came to the place, and saw him, passed by on the other side. 

" But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he 
was ; and when he saw him he had compassion on him, and 
went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; 
and he set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and 
took care of him. And the next day, as he was about to leave, 
he took money from his purse and gave it to the host, and said: 
Take care of him ; and, if you spend any more, I will pay you 
when I come back. 

"Which of these three, said Jesus, do you think was 
neighbor unto him that fell among the robbers? 

u He that took pity on him. 

" Then said Jesus, Go and do thou likewise." 

Now the defect of the Orthodox theology is that, 
instead of deriving its ideal of God from the Good Samar- 
itan, it has taken it from the Priest and the Levite. 
Humanity, it assumes, has fallen. It lies wounded and 
bleeding by the roadside. And yet the Almighty, the 
infinite Father, passes by on the other side. He sees 
his child groaning before his eyes ; but, although it 
has fallen by the sin of another, he puts forth no hand 
to save it. What words could express human indignation 
at the conduct of such a Father? And if we knew that, 
by the cruel neglect of this unnatural parent, the wounded 
child was left to be torn to pieces by wild beasts, or that 
he was captured by savage tribes and subjected to months 



118 THE DOOM OF THE 

of slow torture and finally death, we should hold the father 
as a murderer, and remand him to the universal execra- 
tion of mankind. 

If such would be our feelings toward an earthly parent, 
how much more intensely should we repudiate all views 
of God which charge him with a neglect more culpable 
and a cruelty more intense. Let not this doctrine of the 
damnation of the heathen be charged upon Jesus Christ. 
The tenth of Luke and the fifth of Matthew are a lasting 
rebuke to the Westminster Creed and all who hold it. If 
we think of God at all, we must think of him not as being 
worse, but as infinitely better than humanity. So thought 
Jesus, and therefore urged men to be like unto him : — 

' ' Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor and hate thine enemy: but I say unto you, Love your 
enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate 
you, and pray for them which despitef ully use you and persecute 
you, that ye may be the children of your Father which is in 
heaven ; for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the 
good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. Be ye 
therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is 
perfect." 

£. The CJiaracter of the Doomed. 

Another remarkable ethical defect of this doctrine 
is that it represents God as ignoring profound moral 
distinctions. 

1. God ignores moral distinctions in treating the inno- 
cent as if they icere guilty. 

The astounding statement is made that by the sin of 
Adam the whole race partakes not only of the conse- 
quences of his sin, but also of his guilt. Adam was the 
representative of the race, says Calvinism ; when he fell, 
the race fell with him. Every human being is born into 
the world steeped in original sin and under the penalty 
of eternal death. Even the innocent babe, dying without 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 119 

any consciousness of sin, without, in fact, consciousness of 
its own existence, cannot be saved without the application 
of the atoning blood of Christ to its soul ; and according 
to the belief of Catholics and Lutherans we can only be 
sure that this blood has been applied when the child has 
been sprinkled with water. 

We object to this view that it is merely a theological 
fiction, — that it is not true, and that it would be unjust if 
it were true. If men are born into the world with a 
nature so corrupt that they cannot obey the law of God, 
it is unjust to punish them for its violation. 1 Guilt can 
only follow where there is sin ; sin is only possible to 
creatures that have moral ability. In punishing creatures 
that are only theoretically sinful, God would show himself 
to be only theoretically just. The assumption, however, 
that all men are born totally depraved we assume to be 
false to begin with. It is contradicted by the facts of 
human nature ; it is contradicted by the example and pre- 
cepts of Jesus Christ, who presented the humility and 
purity of childhood as an ideal to his own disciples by 
which they were to enter the kingdom of heaven. 

Modern Calvinists and Arminians, believing that all 
dying in infancy are saved, attribute their salvation to 
the atonement of Jesus. But such a view is unjust 
to God. It supposes that God regards infants as guilty of 
sin. On the contrary we affirm that children are not 
guilty of sin until they are able to commit it, and that if 
not guilty of sin, they require no atonement for their 
salvation. 

2. But God also ignores profound moral distinctions 
in treating the guilty as if they were innocent. 

1 Rev. Dr. D. D. Whedon, editor of the Methodist Quarterly Review, 
in his article on " Arminianism " in Johnson's Cyclopaedia, forcibly 
states a moral and logical objection to Calvinism : " If a man is to be 
damned for fulfilling God's decrees, ought not that imaginary God to 
be a fortiori damned for making such a decree? " (Vol. i. p. 253.) 



120 THE DOOM OF THE 

A large and influential part of Protestantism has 
revolted against the assumption that men are only pun- 
ished for the guilt of Adam. It is assumed therefore that 
all men actually transgress the infinite law, and are thus 
liable to an infinite penalty. The degree of the trans- 
gression is not important. All that is necessary is to 
commit an infinitesimal sin, to incur the judicial sentence 
of eternal torture. That all men sin we may readily 
admit; that any justly deserve infinite punishment for a 
finite sin we cannot grant for a moment. The object of 
this device is to defend the justice of God in bestowing 
punishment by assuming the guilt of the sinner. If, 
however, we grant, as we are asked to do, the actual as 
well as the inherited guilt of the sinner, we find that, 
although God may observe moral distinctions in damning 
men, yet he ignores moral distinctions in his method of 
saving them. The saved have no righteousness of their 
own. They are polluted and corrupt before God. Does 
the divine mercy save them ? No. Orthodoxy will not 
allow it to operate here where its blessing is so much 
needed. It may operate in the choice of those who are 
saved, but not in the method of their salvation. How 
then are the guilty saved ? Simply because God agrees 
to consider them righteous on account of the righteous- 
ness of his Son. They are not actually righteous ; but 
righteousness is imputed to them. 

It is not possible to transfer righteousness from one 
moral being to another. If a man incurs debt through 
immorality, it does not make him any better, any more 
righteous, if a friend pays the debt for him. We cannot 
put righteousness on or off as if it were a garment. 
Judas would still have been Judas, if he had worn the 
robe of Jesus. The only way righteousness can be 
achieved is in the way Jesus achieved it himself, through 
moral experience. God therefore ignores moral distinc- 
tions if he treats the guilty as if they were innocent. 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 121 

3. God ignores actual moral distinctions in choosing 
those who are saved. 

We say actual distinctions. We mean those distinc- 
tions which are recognized as real and positive in this 
life. We know that these distinctions are not taken as 
the basis for Orthodox theology. Its ethical theories are 
as original and hypothetical as its facts. The distinction 
it makes between a "righteous man" and a " sinner " is 
not the distinction which is made in the community; 
it is not the distinction which corresponds to character. 
We do not mean that Orthodoxy considers good charac- 
ter in this life unimportant ; far from it ; but it assumes 
that good character in this life has nothing to do with 
obtaining salvation in the next. Salvation is obtained 
only through the merits of Christ's blood. Only those 
are saved whom God has chosen to this privilege. If God 
chose only the good and the virtuous and the noble and 
the benevolent, we might infer that his choice was made 
with reference to some moral judgment. But according 
to Orthodoxy this is not the case. The most abandoned 
sinner is chosen as readily as the saint. Let the sinner 
but repent an hour before his death, and express belief in 
the atonement of Jesus, and he is saved. The man, how- 
ever, who has lived an irreproachable life, who has 
endeavored to observe the Golden Rule and the two great 
commandments, who has tried to obey his own conscience, 
to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God, 
— such a man, if he does not accept the Orthodox " plan 
of salvation," is hopelessly lost. 

Mr. Spurgeon, in his commentary on Psalm ix. 17, 
" The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations 
that forget God," thus expresses his conviction in regard 
to the good character of the damned. 

" How solemn is the seventeenth verse, especially in its warn- 
ing to forgetters of God. The moral who are not devout, the 
honest who are not prayerful, the benevolent who are not believ- 



122 THE DOOM OF THE 

ing, the amiable who are not converted, — these must all have 
their portion with the openly wicked in the hell which is prepared 
for the devil and his angels. There are whole nations of such. 
The forgetters of God are far more numerous than the profane 
or profligate; and, according to the very forceful expression of 
the Hebrew, the nethermost hell will be the place into which all 
of them shall be hurled headlong. " {Treasury of David.) 

Is it not clear then that God ignores actual moral dis- 
tinctions, when he allows "the moral," "the honest," "the 
benevolent," and "the amiable," to go to the "nethermost 
hell"? 

But a small proportion of the good people of the world 
are gathered into the Christian Church ; and if it be true 
that only those who " accept Christ " are saved, there will 
be but a small proportion of the good in heaven. Some 
of the grandest souls that have ennobled human life and 
character have been reared under the name and influ- 
ence of paganism. Though they have not professed the 
Christian religion, they have "been diligent to frame their 
lives according to the light of nature and the law of that 
religion they do profess ; " yet, if the Westminster Cate- 
chism, and the system of theology which it represents, be 
true, they cannot be saved in any way whatsoever, and 
" to assert and maintain that they may is very pernicious 
and to be detested." 

One of the charges brought in 1874 against Rev. David 
Swing of Chicago, on his trial for heresy, was that he 
had used language contrary to this section of the Confes- 
sion of Faith : — 

" He [David Swing] has used language in respect to Penelope 
and Socrates which is unwarrantable and contrary to the teach- 
ings of the Confession of Faith, Chap. X. Sec. iv. ; that is to say, 
in his sermon entitled ' Soul Culture' the following passage 
occurs: * There is no doubt the notorious Catherine II. held 
more truth and better truth than was known to all classic Greece 
— held to a belief in a Saviour, of whose glory that gifted land 
knew nought; and yet such is the grandeur of soul above mind, 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 123 

that I doubt not that Queen Penelope, of the dark land, and the 
doubting Socrates have found at heaven's gate a sweeter wel- 
come, sung of angels, than greeted the ear of Russia's brilliant 
but false-lived queen.'" (Specification 12.) 

No matter what the purity and moral altitude of a 
heathen soul may be, " the heathen in mass," according 
to Dr. A. A. Hodge of Princeton, "with no single definite 
and unquestionable exception on record, are evidently 
strangers to God, and going to death in an unsaved con- 
dition." 1 

Precisely the same rules which exclude Penelope, Soc- 
rates, Epictetus, Plato, Plutarch, Confucius, and Gautama, 
exclude also Channing, Emerson, Parker, Garrison, Lin- 
coln, Longfellow, Spinoza, Humboldt, Darwin, and a 
numerous host of "the moral," "the honest," "the ben- 
evolent," and "the amiable," from the joys of the future 
life. It is therefore clear, according to Orthodoxy, that 
God not only chooses but a few from the whole race to be 
saved, but that he ignores all actual moral distinctions in 
selecting this number, and therefore but a small percent- 
age of the good can reach heaven. 

The moral enormity of this doctrine is thus clearly 
exhibited in the inevitable conclusion to which it leads, 
that not only the great majority of the race, but the great 
majority of the good, are doomed to endless woe. 

3. The State of tlie Doomed. 

It is not merely the number and the character of the 
majority that make this doctrine hideous, but it is the 
nature and extent of the doom they suffer — a misery in- 
describable in its severity and unending in its duration. 

It is a sufficient condemnation of the Orthodox view of 
God that, in dooming the great majority of the race, his 
practical and moral government of the universe is proved 

1 Com. on Conf. of Faith, p. 242. 



124 THE DOOM OF THE 

to be a failure. It is a still greater condemnation of the 
system that God is represented as ignoring all practical 
moral distinctions in choosing the saved, while he violates 
the principles of justice and mercy in condemning the 
lost; but the climax of injustice is not reached until we 
remember the utter horror and endlessness of the misery 
to which they are consigned. 

We have directed this treatise against a point in regard 
to which Orthodoxy seems to have developed an unex- 
pected sensitiveness. Certain modern Calvinists are in- 
dignant that Orthodoxy should be represented as teaching 
that the majority are doomed, while they manifest no 
indignation whatever at the nature and extent of the 
doom which this majority must suffer. Yet it is the 
severity and endlessness of the punishment which makes 
the number of its victims of importance. 

Dr. William Rankin Duryee has said that " so far as 
sentiment goes, one soul eternally lost is as painful to 
contemplate as ten million souls." * It depends somewhat 
upon the nature of the sentiment invoked. The senti- 
ment of justice has a problem to deal with in considering 
why God should create the greater part of the human 
race simply to damn them for his glory, which it does not 
have in considering the damnation of a single unrepentant 
soul; but to the sentiment of pity we do not know 
which seems more pathetic, to contemplate billions of 
human souls in endless torment, or to think of a single 
lost soul left in utter loneliness in the eternal abyss. 
Perhaps, if we had the ingenuity of Emmons, we might 
discover a flickering indication of divine benevolence in 
the very fact that God, out of pity to the few, damns the 
vast majority, that they may enjoy together that company 
which misery is said to love. " Solitude," says Donne, 
"is a torment which is not threatened in hell itself." 2 

1 Christian Intelligencer, Feb. 14, 1883. 

2 Works, vol. iii. p 513. 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 125 

Certainly not, if we accept the official estimates of the 
American Board as to the number of souls hell contains — 
estimates based on accepted data of Orthodox theology. 
One of the Schoolmen, quoted by Donne, declared, how- 
ever, that hell could not be possibly above three thousand 
miles in compass, and that one of the torments of that 
place would be its crowded state. 1 And it is apparent 
that neither Emmons nor Edwards, nor any modern expo- 
nent of the horrors of that place, intends that we shall 
derive any comfort from the fact of numbers. 

It is evident, therefore, Dr. Duryee being our witness, 
that no mere alteration in the number of the lost can 
remove the darkness of the destiny to which the lost are 
consigned. Upon this point Calvinism and Arminianism 
stand on the same plane. Arminianism has nobly pro- 
tested against the doom of the majority, but it has failed 
to protest against the doom of the minority. It has sought 
to make God less cruel and vindictive, it has endeavored 
to throw the responsibility of future punishment upon 
man instead of God, it has recoiled with indignation 
from the doctrine of reprobation, it has refused to believe 
in the condemnation of the heathen in mass, it has offered 
the atonement to all; but, with individual exceptions, 
Arminianism has taught, and still teaches, the endless 
misery of all those who fail, during a probation confined 
to this life, to accept the gospel. Methodism has been the 
resolute opponent of Universalism ; it has vied with Cal- 
vinism in depicting, with lurid and painful particularity, 
the fearful and unending state of those who fall into hell. 
If it were the purpose of this treatise to show what Evan- 
gelical denominations have taught concerning the horrors 
of hell, we should hardly know whether Arminian or 
Calvinistic annals furnished the more abundant material. 
The prominence which this doctrine has had in both sys- 
tems, and the frequency with which its terrors have been 

1 Works, vol. iii. p. 325. 



126 THE DOOM OF THE 

exposed, render any further delineation of its physical and 
mental horrors unnecessary. It has been the especial task 
of those who have believed in an endless hell to exhibit, 
for greater effect, the agonies it imposes on its victims. 
The books, sermons, and tracts which have been printed 
to illustrate it would fill a good-sized library; and we 
may thank heaven that by far the larger part of the myr- 
iads of sermons preached to propagate it have escaped 
the printing-press and suffered a just oblivion. A brief 
reference to the titles collected by Dr. Abbot, in his Bibli- 
ography of the Future Life already referred to, will show 
how many treatises have been devoted to the special work 
of depicting endless horrors. Jonathan Edwards is more 
widely known to-day for his famous descriptions of hell- 
torment than for other things which deserve better to be 
remembered. The resources of human ingenuity and of 
human language seem to have been exhausted in inventing 
forms of torture through which the divine wrath may be 
exhibited during the unending cycles of eternity. 

At the present day delineations of the physical terrors 
of hell are less common. Only the uneducated perhaps 
would maintain with Charles Wesley that — 

" A real, fiery, sulphurous hell 

Shall prey upon our outward frame; " 
(Hymns on God's Everlasting Love, Hymn xi. p. 23.) 

But the Orthodox conviction of the severity of the tor- 
ture has been in no degree relaxed. Its form has been 
changed only to add to its intensity; and those who 
no longer believe in a physical fire still assert with 

Wesley : — 

" But sorer pangs the soul shall feel 
Tormented in a fiercer flame." 

It matters little whether we are taught that the damned 
are forever burned in a lake of fire and brimstone, whether 
they are remanded to the tortures of a Satanic persecutor, 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 127 

who shares with God the glory of their pain ; or whether 
they are simply abandoned to the more excruciating tor- 
tures of a sleepless conscience, or affections lacerated by 
eternal separation from all that is lovable. In any case 
the suffering is represented as the most extreme that the 
human mind can conceive, while its duration is described 
as absolutely unending. 

If, as we have said, it has been the especial task of 
believers in an endless hell to expose the physical and 
mental horrors of the doctrine they have taught, it has 
been reserved for those who oppose the doctrine to point 
out its moral enormities. If the pictures drawn of the 
state of the damned are horrible, the picture of God pre- 
sented is still more horrible. We cannot avoid the 
conviction that the damned are morally superior to a God 
who, with malignant hate or cruel indifference, would 
consign them to a fate which they have in no measure 
deserved. All attempts to found this doctrine upon 
rational premises utterly fail. It is in its very nature 
irrational and arbitrary ; and it can only exist under the 
supposition that God is a tyrant to be feared, and not a 
Father to be loved and obeyed. 

The conception of law is totally opposed to a punish- 
ment which is lawless in its execution ; and all ethical 
considerations are violated when we find God meting out 
infinite punishment for a finite sin. Of all the lame 
apologies which Orthodoxy has been driven to make in 
its behalf, none avail to remove the fearful moral diffi- 
culties of this doctrine, and the terrible reproach it casts 
upon the character of God. 

That retribution for acts done in this life may extend 
to the next, and that the vast majority of mankind may 
have much to repent of, we do not deny. Such a concep- 
tion is rational and ethical ; but it is the fearful curse of 
endless woe that makes future punishment hideous. It 
assumes that evil must forever continue in the universe, 



128 THE DOOM OF THE 

and that Infinite Goodness has no power to subdue it ; or 
if God's power be acknowledged, it assumes that he is not 
willing to exert it, and thus while his power abides, his 
goodness perishes. 

The doctrine of endless punishment, and the idea of 
God that accompanies it, belongs to an age that is past — 
an age of superstition and cruelty. It is a belief which 
could never yield the fruits of righteousness and peace. 
It does not draw men toward God ; it drives them from 
him. Its practical results have been such as we might 
expect from so cruel a theory. Rev. Stopford Brooke 
justly claims that "the doctrine of eternal punishment 
ought to be denied because of its evil fruits." 

" A good tree does not bring forth corrupt fruit, and we owe 
to this doctrine all the slaughter and cruelty done by alternately 
triumphant sects in the name of God. It gave birth to the 
Inquisition ; it drove the Jews to unutterable misery ; it burnt 
thousands of innocent men and women for witchcraft ; it tor- 
tured and rent the bodies and souls of men ; it depopulated fertile 
lands ; it ruined nations ; it kept the world for centuries in dark- 
ness, held back civilization, and in all ages urged on the dogs 
of cruelty and fanaticism to their accursed hunting." {Eternal 
Punishment : a sermon, preached at Bedford Chapel, London, 
Nov. 5, 1882.) 

None too severe is this bold arraignment. If this 
doctrine has not always been the direct and immediate 
cause of such cruelties, it has sprung from the very spirit 
that created them, and has powerfully assisted in their 
perpetuation. Men have appealed to the cruelty of God 
to justify the cruelties which they have wrought with their 
own hands. And what are the practical effects of the doc- 
trine to-day ? Mr. Brooke has observed them in England 
and thus speaks : — 

" Those were its fruits in the past, and on this account we 
ought to deny its truth. But now we ought to fight against its 
lies day by day; for we who do not believe it have no notion of 
the harm it is doing to those who do believe it. We are bound 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 129 

to contend against it if we have any desire that a nobler Christi- 
anity should prevail among men, for its teaching drives men into 
infidelity and atheism. The less educated classes — who yet feel 
strongly, and more strongly than the educated, the things of the 
conscience and the heart — say that it denies all their moral in- 
stincts. And so it does. It makes them look on God as an 
unreasoning and capricious tyrant, and they turn. from him with 
dread and hate. It makes them consider the story of redemption 
as either a weak effort on the part of an incapable God to save 
man, or as mockery by him of his creatures, on the plea of a 
love which they see as derisive, and a justice which they see 
as favoritism. And till we free the teachings of Christianity 
from this doctrine, religious teachers will still continue to give, 
as they do now, the greatest impulse to infidelity among the 
working-classes, an impulse much greater than any given by 
all the materialism of philosophers or all the mouthing of 
iconoclasts." (lb.) 

There are grateful signs that this doctrine is losing its 
hold upon the popular mind. The Evangelical churches 
find it less politic to use it as an aggressive weapon. 
Formerly the doctrine was used to defend the authority 
of the Church ; at present the Church is obliged to defend 
the authority of the doctrine. It still stands in all its 
grimness on the church creeds, but apologies are required 
for its presence there. One of them lies before us. It is 
a tract entitled "Eternal Destruction," issued by the 
Presbyterian Board of Publication, Philadelphia, in 1882, 
to show "that eternal death, or everlasting destruction, is 
both reasonable and necessary, as the highest penalty 
under the divine government." " Our object," says the 
author, " is rather to tone up the faith and correct the 
errors of many who, while professing to hold fast to the 
doctrine of future punishment as set forth in the creeds 
of the Evangelical churches, do it, nevertheless, with 
apparent misgivings, and when they speak of it are wont 
to say in substance that it is a terrible mystery that such 
a doctrine is contained in a revelation from the God of 

9 



130 THE DOOM OF THE 

infinite love, and that they could not receive it were it 
not for the positive teaching of inspiration. If they at- 
tempt to use the terrors of future retribution as a part of 
God's message to sinful men, they do it so delicately, and 
with such softening circumlocution, as fairly to suggest 
that either the Evangelical ministry of the present day do 
not half believe the doctrine of endless punishment, or 
that they have not the courage to preach it. And those 
who repeat this saying care perhaps very little which of 
these alternatives is true, for the want of courage to de- 
clare one's convictions must imply that such opinions are 
passing out of the general belief of the community." 

That such a defence should be necessary shows the 
higher ethical demand which compels it. That the Presby- 
terian Board should be willing to make it, shows, on the 
other hand, the tenacity with which this doctrine is clung 
to as an essential part of the Orthodox system. It is a 
belief which is destined to die, but not without a long 
struggle. It behooves those who have once held it, to 
make a continued and earnest effort to relieve other minds 
of the darkness which it casts over the horizon of life. 
There is no surer way of contributing to its extinction, 
than by insisting that ethics shall have the authority in 
theology that it has in common life. Theology has prac- 
tically ignored the profoundest moral relations. It can- 
not regain its authority until it bows to the moral law 
that it has ignored. 



VII, 

The Solution. 

It would be a painful task to expose the " dark and 
awful" features of the doom of the majority, if we did 
not know that there is a brighter and nobler view of God 
and human destiny which should displace it. It is un- 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 131 

doubtedly true, as we have said before, that the great mass 
who hold this doctrine, only nominally believe it. It does 
not affect their happiness, because they never realize its 
fearful import. Human nature has other resources besides 
logic with which to protect itself against superstition. As 
a bullet may be encysted in the body, so a painful and un- 
natural belief may become encysted in the mind. Yet there 
are thousands of devout, earnest, and thoughtful people 
who are periodically sensible of the oppressive weight of 
this dogma. They would gladly be relieved of the bur- 
den if they could but see how it might be rolled off. To 
such minds Orthodoxy offers no help. The logical super- 
structure of Orthodoxy has been carefully built. So long 
as the foundation premises are acknowledged, its conclu- 
sions inevitably follow. The whole system is based on an 
ancient but palpably false conception of the universe. The 
false premises must be removed before we can expect to 
destroy the false conclusions. 

In denying the premises of Orthodoxy we do not, ne- 
cessarily, deny those of Christianity. The fundamental 
principles of all religions are far deeper than the theo- 
logical systems that are built upon them. Indeed, it is 
by a re-assertion of essentially Christian principles that 
we find a corrective for many of the errors that have 
been taught in Christianity's name. Infant damnation, 
for instance, is historically a dogma of Christian theology ; 
yet nothing could be more diametrically opposed to the 
original principles of the Christian religion. If the gos- 
pels be not a lie, Jesus treated little children as if they 
were the offspring of God, not as if they were the off- 
spring of the devil. 

What, then, is the natural, rational, and ethical relief 
for this doctrine of the doom of the majority? It is not 
one of our own invention. If it were simply a private 
and personal solution we should hesitate to offer it ; but 
it is one towards which the spirit of the age is irresistibly 



132 THE DOOM OF THE 

moving. We are merely reporting its utterances. It is 
a solution which is an outgrowth of broader and healthier 
conceptions of God and humanity, and a more enlightened 
view of the functions of reason, ethics, and religion. We 
have not space to unfold it at length ; we can only briefly 
indicate some directions in which its influence is evident. 

1. A More Enlightened View of the Bible. 

The doctrine we have endeavored to refute is not a con- 
genial one to the reason or the heart. It would promptly 
be abandoned by the majority who hold it, if it were 
not supposed to rest on Biblical authority. The creeds 
which contain it are authoritative mainly because they 
are presumed to be a correct exposition of the Bible on 
the points they cover. Hence, in the endeavor to refute 
the Orthodox view of this doctrine, much attention has 
been necessarily directed towards a better interpretation 
of the Scriptures. The discussion has long been waged on 
the battle-ground of exegesis. This has not been without 
valuable and helpful results. Unfortunately, however, it 
has usually been conducted under the limitations imposed 
by an erroneous view of the Bible itself. It has been 
assumed that there is no appeal from its acknowledged 
teaching ; that it concludes all debate on the subjects of 
which it speaks ; that it is divinely inspired and infallible. 
Bound by this view of the infallibility and dominant au- 
thority of this collection of books, the only resource which 
has been left to those who accept it, when struggling 
against doubtful or uncongenial teachings, has been to 
exercise a desperate ingenuity in the interpretation of 
texts. The temptation has been strong on one side to 
admit only traditional interpretations, or those which har- 
monized with an accepted theological system ; on the other 
side, the temptation has been to make the Bible mean 
always what we would like to have it mean. The integ- 
rity of the intellect has been sacrificed to quiet the moral 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 133 

sense or to allay disturbed emotions. Much has been read 
into the book that does not belong there, and much has 
been read out of it that it really teaches. This has been 
occasioned wholly by the unjust claims made in its behalf, 
and the artifices to which men have resorted in evading 
them. 

In an address which excited wide attention, and which 
led to the debate on the special topic of this book, Rev. 
George E. Ellis, D.D., 1 said with great truth : — 

14 Orthodoxy cannot readjust its creed till it readjusts its estimate 
of the Scriptures. The only relief which one who professes the 
Orthodox creed can find, is either by forcing his ingenuity into 
the proof- texts or indulging his liberty outside of them. All the 
most vital and searching forces now at work in their bearing 
upon themes of loftiest import to man demand, and are working 
toward, the intelligent and fearless reconsideration of the ac- 
cepted view of the Bible, which opens the most teasing contro- 
versies, which deals with them all in a most unsatisfactory way, 
and leaves them all unsettled, if not more perplexed. 

44 Here is a volume of miscellaneous and heterogeneous con- 
tents, some of them written we know not when, where, or by 
whom, all of which are unified as from one divine source and 
authority. In that volume is matter, instruction, warning, 
precept, and promise of priceless and transcendent value for the 
life and the hope of man. For that, it is consecrated and 
bedewed with the most sacred of human affections. Because 
of such contents, that book has become to Christendom a 
gracious gift of God. We refer to its influence, with that of 
the steady progress of material and physical science which it 
has helped to quicken and guide, — all the most elevating, refin- 
ing, beneficent, and regenerating agencies which are advancing 
and redeeming humanity. 

44 Xow look at that book from the other side, as what is called 
Church History centres around it. There are matters in that book 

l « xhe Position of the Liberal Body as affected by the Kupture 
in the Orthodox Body of Congregationalists," Christian Register, Nov. 
16, 1882. See also additional statements of Dr. Ellis in issues of the 
same paper for Nov. 23, 1882 ; Jan. 18, 1883. 



134 THE DOOM OF THE 

which, if they have not been the cause, have been the occasion, 
the agency, the instrumentality, backed by an assumed divine 
warrant, of strifes, feuds, superstitions, persecutions, barbari- 
ties, and atrocities of every stain and hue, which have strewn 
the world for ages with wrecks of woe and agony. I will not 
fill up that outline. I shudder over the summary ; and I cannot 
challenge the charge which assigns all this to the estimate and 
use of the less lovely, the less benedictive lessons of the Bible. 
President Mather of our young college, for many years the most 
eminent and honored man, citizen, and divine in this colony, 
expressly taught that the divine command to the Israelites to 
exterminate the Canaanites was a full warrant for the desolation 
of our Indian tribes. Search to the bottom the history of that 
delirium of dread and frenzy and outrage which we call the 
witchcraft delusion here, nearly two centuries ago. You will 
find but a single palliation for the agency of good and upright 
men in those horrors. Judges, witnesses, yes, even the victims, 
read in a book — which they had all been taught to believe, and 
did believe, was written by the finger of God — this sentence : 
' Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.' 

" Ifc is not alleged by any one that there is a single sentence 
in that book which was written with intent to deceive or mis- 
lead. But there is much in it, with the authority and purpose 
claimed for it, which has grievously misled many of the best of 
our race, and which does so now. A steadily increasing number 
of persons of all grades and classes in intelligence, sincerity, 
and devoutness, leave that book from year to year through a long 
life unopened. Not as preachers complacently say, because of 
their sin-hardened hearts, for very many of them are seeking 
and longing for some blessed religious guidance. It is because 
what they remember and hear said about the book, as coming 
direct from God, perplexes, astounds, and shocks them. There 
are those who continue to be readers, and who share those feel- 
ings, publishing their doubts and denials, often with ridicule and 
scorn. They find in the book commands, purposes, and acts 
assigned to God, at which they would shudder if ascribed to 
heathen deities. Standing on this modern earth and beneath 
these ancient heavens, men boldly, sometimes sadly, say that 
there are assertions and statements in that book which they know 
positively to be untrue, — untrue to fact, to history, to the verities 



MAJORITY OF MAXKIXD. 135 

of nature and life, to the attributes and rule of the Being to 
whom their loftiest and most devout convictions rise as the God 
over all. A clerical discussion upon the point whether Scripture 
texts can be interpreted so as to allow a hope for idiots, infants, 
and heathen, who have had an 4 imperfect probation ' here, 
does not reach to their relief. When a few of those texts are 
alleged as certifying that the vast majority of the human race 
are to be the victims of endless woe, the questions cannot be 
silenced: 'Who wrote those words, and with what authority? 
Were they correctly reported and duly certified ? ' " 

In these words Dr. Ellis goes to the very bottom of the 
difficulty. A scholarly, conscientious exegesis may furnish 
some relief; but no adequate and satisfactory solution is 
possible until the Orthodox estimate of the inspiration and 
infallibility of the Bible is revised. Justice to those who 
wrote these books, as well as to those who read them, 
requires such a revision. A candid study of the book 
shows, we believe, that the Orthodox view r of the Bible is 
not taught in the Bible itself. Like the doctrine of the 
Trinity, it is something imposed upon it. 

Before we can test anything by the Bible, we must test 
the Bible itself. The tests we may employ are threefold 
— historical, rational, and ethical. 

THE HISTORICAL TEST. 

Whence, when, and how, we must ask, did this collection 
of books come ? Who wrote them, whom did they address, 
and to w 7 hat end ? How was this collection put together, 
under what influences, and by whose decision ? 

The simple historical answer, which we cannot present 
in detail, shows that the Bible grew up precisely as other 
sacred books grew, — that, while it records miraculous 
events, it has no miraculous history itself. It was written 
in Hebrew and Greek, by different men of widely different 
character, during an interval of a thousand years. The 
original manuscripts have not been preserved. The copies 



136 THE DOOM OF THE 

that exist vary sufficiently to make an infallible text impos- 
sible. No truthful man can put a copy of the Greek or 
of the Hebrew Testament into the hands of a reader of 
these languages, and say, "Here is the book just as it 
was originally written." There are many manuscripts to 
choose from, and the best Hebrew and Greek text of the 
Bible is that which shows the best human judgment and 
the widest and most accurate scholarship in its selection. 

Still further, historical research shows that the books 
which compose the Bible were not bound together by the 
command or indication of God ; they were selected by 
men. We have no evidence that the judgment of Christian 
communities, leaders, or councils was infallible. On the 
contrary, the Christian Church has never agreed as to 
the number and selection of books which constitute the 
Bible. Thus, Augustine had one Bible, and Jerome 
another; the Roman Church has one Bible, and the Prot- 
estant another; the Swedenborgians one Bible, and the 
Orthodox another. The history of the formation of the 
Bible Canon is a refutation of the claim that is made for 
the infallibility of the book. " It is clear," says Dr. Samuel 
Davidson, 1 " that the earliest Church Fathers did not use 
the books of the New Testament as sacred documents 
clothed with divine authority, but followed for the most 
part, at least till the middle of the second century, apos- 
tolic tradition orally transmitted. They were not solicit- 
ous about a Canon circumscribed within certain limits." 
And in regard to the principle which guided selection 
Dr. Davidson says : — 

" The exact principles that guided the formation of a Canon 
in the earliest centuries cannot be discovered. Definite grounds 
for the reception or rejection of books were not very clearly 
apprehended. The choice was determined by various circum- 
stances, of which apostolic origin was the chief, though this 

1 Article on u The Canon," in Encyclopedia Britannica, ninth ed., 
vol. v. pp. 9, 10. 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 137 

itself was insufficiently attested ; for, if it be asked whether all 
the New Testament writings proceeded from the authors whose 
names they bear, criticism cannot reply in the affirmative. . . . 

44 Instead of attributing the formation of the Canon to the 
Church, it would be more correct to say that the important stage 
in it was due to three teachers, each working separately and in 
his own way, who were intent upon the creation of a Christian 
society which did not appear in the apostolic age, — a visible 
organization united in faith, — where the discordant opinions of 
apostolic and sub-apostolic times should be finally merged. The 
Canon was not the work of the Christian Church, so much as 
of the men who were striving to form that Church, and could 
not get beyond the mould received by primitive Christian 
literature.' ' 

Luther exercised the right of private judgment very 
freely in regard to the books which should compose the 
Bible. Esther, he thought, did not properly belong to it. 
The Apocalypse he " considered neither apostolic nor 
prophetic, but put it almost on the same level with the 
Fourth Book of Esdras, which he spoke elsewhere of toss- 
ing into the Elbe." x The Epistle of James he thought 
an " epistle of straw ; " and he denied apostolic authorship 
to James, Jude, and Hebrews. If Luther could be so 
free and independent in judging the authority of whole 
books, why may we not judge with equal freedom the 
authority of special texts ? 

If God had seen fit to make an infallible book, w r e may 
be certain that he would have surely indicated what books 
or chapters should belong to it, and that he would not 
have left its interpretation such a doubtful matter. The 
Roman Catholic Church has consistently maintained that 
an infallible interpretation is necessary to an infallible 
revelation. 

It is evident therefore, on external and historic grounds, 
that there is not the slightest foundation on which to build 
this dogma of Protestantism. 

i Ibid., p. 14. 



138 THE DOOM OF THE 



THE RATIONAL TEST. 



If there is no external authority for the interpretation 
of the Bible, we must judge it by its contents. We must 
apply to it precisely the same tests that we apply to all 
other books. If the Bible appeals to reason, we must 
judge it by the laws of reason. If the Bible contradicts 
reason, reason may justly contradict the Bible. 

Bishop Butler clearly recognized the rational test: — 
" I express myself with caution, lest I should be mistaken to 
vilify reason ; which is indeed the only faculty we have where- 
with to judge concerning anything, even revelation itself; or be 
misunderstood to assert, that a supposed revelation cannot be 
proved false from internal characters. For it may contain clear 
immoralities or contradictions; and either of these would prove 
it false." (Butler's Analogy, Part II. ch. iii. p. 219, Bonn's Ed.) 

Again : — 

" Reason can, and it ought to judge, not only of the meaning, 
but also of the morality and the evidence of revelation." (Jb. 
p. 229.) 

Dr. Channing did noble service in maintaining the office 
of reason in testing and interpreting the Bible. " How," 
he asked, "is the right of interpretation, the real meaning 
of Scriptures, to be ascertained? I answer, By Reason. 
I know of no process by which the true sense of the New 
Testament is to pass from the page into my mind without 
the use of my rational faculties. In truth, no book can 
be written so simply as to need no exercise of reason." 
In another passage, Dr. Channing says: — 

M If I could not be Christian without ceasing to be rational, 
I should not hesitate as to my choice. I feel myself bound to 
sacrifice to Christianity property, reputation, and life ; but I 
ought not to sacrifice to any religion that reason which lifts me 
above the brute and constitutes me a man. I can conceive no 
sacrilege greater than to prostrate or renounce the highest fac- 
ulty which we have derived from God. In so doing, we should 
offer violence to the divinity within us." (Christianity a Rational 
Religion.} 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 139 

Again, in the same paper, he said: "We must never 
forget that our rational nature is the greatest gift of God. 
For this, we owe him our chief gratitude. It is a greater 
gift than any outward aid or benefaction, and no doctrine 
which degrades it can come from its Author." 

On this ground, which Channing took, we may main- 
tain a firm stand. The Bible is a noble gift from humanity 
to humanity ; but reason is still nobler and diviner, because 
it is the witness we have that we are the offspring of the 
Eternal Mind. 

It is clear that reason must use to-day all the light that 
eighteen centuries of increased knowledge may throw 
upon the topics which the Bible treats. We need no 
longer turn to Genesis to learn the story of the creation 
of the world or the origin of man, or to explain the 
diversity of human speech. Modern science can read the 
story of creation more correctly from a still older Genesis. 
Historical questions are to be determined by untrammeled 
historical criticism, and all questions involving rational 
judgment are to be decided on rational principles, or by 
appeals to human experience. 

Some years ago the writer attended a prolonged debate 
in Utah, between Orson Pratt and Rev. Dr. J. P. Newman, 
on the subject, u Does the Bible sanction Polygamy ? " The 
Mormon marshalled texts with considerable skill, and the 
debate concluded with a hot battle over the interpretation 
of a certain text in Leviticus, which began with a " Thus 
saith the Lord," the one side contending that it prohibited 
polygamy, and the other that it permitted it; and the 
Hebrew language suffered evident violence in the en- 
deavor to make it mean one thing or the other. It was a 
striking proof of the futility of appealing to an infallible 
book without an infallible interpretation. A rational 
method would have transferred the discussion to another 
field, and decided it not by a text in Leviticus, but by the 
common sense, the moral judgments, and the experience 
of humanity. 



140 THE DOOM OF THE 

THE ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS TEST. 

If reason is necessary to test the truth or error of any- 
given part of the Bible, the ethical and religious test is 
still more necessary. We must decline to accept as au- 
thoritative any interpretation of the Bible, be it true or 
false, which affronts the moral sense of humanity or im- 
pugns the righteousness of God. 

The savage barbarities of the early Hebrews, for in- 
stance, in the slaughter of their enemies, are defended 
because done by divine command. We apply the ethical 
test, and are forced to decide that God could not and did 
not command any such atrocities. They are sufficiently 
explained by the existence and unrighteous manifestation 
of human passions, and find sad parallels even in our own 
day. We cannot suppose that God ever literally com- 
manded a Hebrew father to sacrifice his child upon an 
altar, even if merely to try his faith. The story of Abra- 
ham is an illustration of the ruling idea of early ages; and 
we see how the patriarch, in climbing the mountain, 
reached also higher and truer ideas of God. The moral 
standard of the early Hebrews was lower than that we 
accept to-day, and therefore is not to be received as au- 
thoritative, unless confirmed or corrected by later and 
higher tests. 

It is from a failure to apply the ethical test to the Bible, 
that Orthodoxy has reared upon it a theological system 
which, as Channing well said, " owes its perpetuity to the 
influence of fear in palsying the moral nature." "Its 
errors are peculiarly mournful, because they relate to the 
character of God. It darkens and stains his pure nature, 
spoils his character of its sacredness, loveliness, glory, and 
thus quenches the central light of the universe, makes 
existence a curse, and the extinction of it a consummation 
devoutly to be wished." 1 

1 Moral Argument against Calvinism. 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 141 

The moral darkness of that system is sufficiently illus- 
trated and abundantly acknowledged in the evidence we 
have presented in relation to this doctrine. In justice to 
the Bible, it may be necessary critically to study its pages 
to see if it teaches it ; but, when we are asked to decide 
about the truth of the doctrine itself, exegesis has nothing 
to do with it. The dogma must be tried at the bar of 
reason and conscience ; and, when these condemn it, 
its doom is sealed. The Bible is not the test of Ethics, 
but Ethics must be the test of the Bible. Says Dr. 
Channing : — 

• " Reason must prescribe the tests or standards to which a 
professed communication from God should be referred; and, 
among these, none are more important than the moral law which 
belongs to the very essence and is the deepest conviction of the 
rational nature." (Christianity a Rational Religion.) 

' ' How dangerous it is to read the Scriptures without carrying 
into their interpretation our reason and the light of conscience ! 
. . . The free, bold language of the Apostle has been perverted 
from its original significance, and made to support a system 
which reason and conscience revolt from, and which transforms 
Christianity from the gospel of glad tidings into the saddest 
message ever preached." (The Universal Father.) 

IS THE BIBLE AN ORTHODOX BOOK? 

Not until we have put aside, as unbiblical, unreasonable, 
and untenable, the Orthodox view of the nature and 
origin of the Bible, and are prepared to treat it simply as a 
collection of religious and historical books of purely human 
origin, resting on the same basis with all other religious 
books, are we in a position to ask what the Bible is, and 
what it teaches. Only then can we approach it without 
theological bias. We shall then find that it does not teach 
the system of Orthodoxy, or any exact system of theology. 
The doctrinal unity of the book is utterly broken. It was 
written at different times, by different men, under the 



142 THE DOOM OF THE 

influence of different ideas. It shows growth, develop- 
ment, diversity. A monotheistic conception dominates 
both of its divisions; but there is just as much difference 
betw T een Jahveh, the jealous God of the early Hebrews, 
and the tender, loving Father w r hom Jesus worshipped, 
as there is between the God of Calvin and the God of 
Channing. The Canticles have no more reference to 
Jesus than have Virgil's Eclogues. The writer of the 
fifty-third chapter of Isaiah no more thought of Jesus, 
when he wrote that chapter, than he thought of Abraham 
Lincoln ; and the lesson of the chapter is as applicable to 
one as to the other, illustrating a grand truth which the 
whole history of the world plainly reveals, that " without 
shedding of blood there is no remission." Only through 
the blood of its martyrs has humanity been lifted to a 
higher plane of truth. Difference, diversity, opposition, 
and development are seen in the New Testament. Paul 
did not teach the miraculous birth of Jesus ; the Synoptics 
do not give the speculations of Paul; while the Gospel of 
John, written under Grecian influence, presents a differ- 
ent view of Jesus from the more Hebraic one of the 
Synoptics. 

Though it would be unjust to Orthodoxy to say that 
none of its doctrines can be supported by Biblical texts, 
and that some of them are not natural growths on Bib- 
lical soil, yet we believe that the Bible, taken without the 
constraint of this theory of infallibility, and interpreted 
on the same principles on which we should determine the 
meaning of a Greek or Latin classical author, does not 
yield the Orthodox system. 

There is another branch of study which greatly helps 
in deciding this question, and that is the department of 
Church History. When we interrogate it, we find that 
Orthodoxy, as a system, has not sprung full-formed from 
the Bible, but that it is of much later origin and growth. 
An effectual refutation of many of its errors is found 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 143 

when we trace them back to their inception, and note the 
influences that have shaped them, and the false premises 
on which they are based. The doctrines of the Trinity, 
the deity of Jesus, total depravity, the atonement, endless 
punishment, the infallibility of the Bible, — in short, the 
very doctrines which Orthodoxy still regards as essential, 
— are all subjects of post-Biblical growth and develop- 
ment. In regard to the doctrine of the Trinity, for in- 
stance, supposed by Orthodoxy to be fundamental, there 
is not one passage in the Bible, from Genesis to Revela- 
tion, which can be imagined to be a statement of it ; which 
even sounds like saying "in the unity of the Godhead 
there are three persons, the same in substance, equal in 
power and glory." Not only is there no clear passage in 
which any writer of the New Testament, speaking in his 
own name, has called Jesus Christ God, in any sense, but 
on the contrary, he is everywhere as clearly distinguished 
from the "One God, the Father," as a distinct person or 
being, in the ordinary sense of the words person or 
being, as Peter is from John. He is everywhere repre- 
sented, not as " equal in power and glory" to God, but as 
subordinate to him and dependent upon him. If Jesus 
Christ were to return to the earth to-day we believe he 
would be profoundly surprised at the Christianity which 
has been and still is taught in his name. His own disci- 
ples misunderstood him ; and humanity has repeated, 
perpetuated, and multiplied their mistakes. The Bible 
has been a quarry to which men could go and, when- 
ever they needed, find a text as the corner-stone for some 
doctrinal theory. The stones thus wrenched from the 
original strata have been shaped and fashioned in church- 
councils, synods, presbyteries, and in the brains of profes- 
sional theologians. From age to age the design of the 
edifice has been changed, and redecorated and elaborated. 
John Calvin was the master architect who rebuilt the 
system, and secured for it his name. When we compare 



144 THE DOOM OF THE 

the Calvinistic system with the Christian one, they differ 
as much as a mediaeval cathedral differs from the bound- 
less sky under whose well-beloved benediction Jesus 
delighted to preach. Calvinism can only accommodate 
a few ; Christianity is large enough for all. 

Whatever appeals may be made to the strong Oriental 
imagery of special texts of the New Testament, in which 
the idea of retribution is figured, the number of Christians 
is increasing who refuse to believe that he who preached 
the beatitudes, and told the parables of the Good Samari- 
tan, the Prodigal Son, and the Ninety and Nine, ever 
meant to teach either the damnation of the majority or 
the endless misery of a single human soul. 

The assumption of the infallibility of the Bible, and 
the kindred assumption of the infallibility of the Pope, 
both arose from the endeavor to preserve the authority of 
the Church. One assumption is as insupportable as the 
other, and we do not know which is the more mischievous. 
Humanity will have nothing to lose, but everything to 
gain, from abandoning them. 

The Bible has been the test of Truth ; now Truth must 
be the test of the Bible. All that is just, pure, and true 
in that book, all that helps and comforts, all that is in- 
spired because it inspires, will be gratefully preserved. 
Its errors, or the errors which have been built upon it, will 
be gently and firmly laid aside. As Dr. Ellis has truly 
said: "That the sanctities of that book may be retained, 
the assumptions and superstitions associated with it must 
be surrendered." 1 

The removal of false notions concerning the absolute 
authority of the Bible will lead to a more sympathetic 
attitude toward the sacred literature of other peoples, and 
the religions which they represent. The damnation of the 
heathen has been frequently defended on account of their 
idolatry. Even such a serious writer as Dr. Shedd, in his 

i Christian Register, Nov. 16, 1882. 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 145 

sermon on "The Guilt of the Pagan," presents this as one 
charge in the indictment. Yet the conception of God 
which the heathen often entertain is morally superior to 
that of the God who is preached to them in the name 
of Christianity. The idolatry of the heathen, instead of 
establishing their guilt, is their vindication. It is but 
another proof of the presence and aspiration of the 
religious sentiment. The heathen who bows down to 
wood and stone is more evidently human, more evidently 
religious, than if he bowed to nothing. 

This more sympathetic attitude towards other religions, 
instead of diminishing our consciousness of the divine light 
which shines upon the pages of the Hebrew-Christian 
Bible, will help us to a recognition of the breadth, 
fulness, and perpetuity of the divine manifestation. 
There is an older and a larger Bible, w T hose Genesis was 
"in the beginning" and whose Revelation has not closed. 
Not only unto us, but unto all the nations, hath the Divine 
Word spoken. God hath never left himself without wit- 
ness, either in the works of nature or in the heart of 
man. 

We have quoted from Channing to show that this 
rational and ethical test of the Bible was defended by his 
illustrious pen. We cannot better close this chapter than 
by reaffirming in his own words, from that admirable essay 
on " God Revealed in the Universe and in Humanity," 
our conviction that the revelation of God is not confined 
to the Christian Bible, but that it is as large as humanity, 
as boundless as the universe : — 

" Divine Wisdom is not shut up in any one book. . . . We 
cannot find language to express the worth of the illumination 
thus given through Jesus Christ. But we shall err greatly if 
we imagine that his gospel is the only light, that every ray comes 
to us from a single book, that no splendors issue from God's 
works and providence, that we have no teacher in religion but 
the few pages bound up in our Bible. Jesus Christ came, not 

10 



146 THE DOOM OF THE 

• 

only to give us his peculiar teaching, but to introduce us to the 
imperishable lessons which God forever furnishes in our own 
and all human experience, and in the laws and movements of 
the universe. 

2. A Different Estimate of Human Nature. 

Remove the stumbling-block of Biblical infallibility, 
and theology will sooner or later adjust itself to the facts 
of science and the demands of ethics. A more modern 
view of the nature and origin of man will follow. If the 
Bible be the architectural plan, the supposed fall of Adam 
is the corner-stone on which the Orthodox system rests. 
Take that away, and the logical superstructure falls. The 
order for its removal has already been passed, and is 
gradually being executed. This Semitic legend of the 
introduction of sin into the world has exercised an im- 
mense influence upon Christian theology. Its influence 
has been exerted, not in what it teaches so much as in 
what men have taught from it, — namely, that by this sin 
our first parents "fell from their original righteousness 
and communion with God, and so became dead in sin, 
and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and 
body ; they being the root of all mankind, the guilt of 
this sin was imputed, and the same death in sin and cor- 
rupted nature conveyed to all their posterity descending 
from them by ordinary generation. From this original 
corruption, whereby w r e are utterly indisposed, disabled, 
and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all 
evil, do proceed all actual transgressions." 1 

The additions which have been made to the original 
legend may be seen by comparing this version of the 
Westminster Confession with the version in Genesis. 

It is this sin of Adam which calls down the wrath of 
God, opens the pit of an endless hell, and requires an 
infinite atonement. 

1 Westminster Confession, VI. n.-iv. 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 147 

When, however, we learn that the story is simply a 
legend^ and not the record of a fact, the poetry remains, 
but the horrible consequences disappear. Viewed through 
the light of science, and the revelations of history and 
philosophy, human nature is seen to be not ruined, but 
incomplete. Humanity has not hopelessly fallen ; it has 
ascended by slow and toilsome climbing the lofty spiral 
of history. It has suffered checks and, in different 
branches, retrogression ; but age by age its progress has 
been upward and onward toward the attainment of ideals 
which God has not failed to reveal to it. No curse of 
God flows in the blood of humanity, for " in him we live 
and move and have our being," " for we also are his 
offspring." 

This rational view of the origin of human nature and 
its education and development lights up the whole track 
of history, displays the method of God in the education 
of the race, and, instead of hanging a dark pall over the 
unknown future, paints the prospect before us in cheerful 
colors of hope and trust. 

There is a divine element in human nature, revealing to 
us our kinship with the Eternal. There are instincts, 
aspirations, and affections in the soul, which prophesy 
growth and development. It may be through the disci- 
pline of pain, through unremitting struggle ; but it shall 
climb on the trellis which God has raised for it, arid bear 
fruit in future ages on a higher plane. Our faith in the 
destiny of humanity is planted deeply in our confidence 
in God. 

S. A Nobler View of God. 

Our thought of God should ever be the product of our 
highest and best ideals. Under Calvinism this is not pos- 
sible. God is surrounded by clouds and darkness ; his 
moral glory is eclipsed. A more just conception of the 
character of God and his relation to humanity will require 



148 THE DOOM OF THE 

a complete revision of the traditional theology. We can- 
not be satisfied with any representation of God which 
makes him less just, true, and good than humanity. As 
Dr. Ellis 1 truly says : " There cannot be two kinds of 
justice, for God and man, any more than there can be 
two kinds of mathematics, for measuring the fields of the 
earth and the spaces of the sky." Our thought of God at 
best is incomplete and imperfect. It is bounded by the 
limitations of our nature. It must be to a great degree 
anthropomorphic. The frames in which we picture God 
as ruler, governor, creator, judge, cannot bound his in- 
finitude. A larger and more grateful conception is that 
of the Divine Fatherhood or Motherhood. It is meta- 
phoric, limited, incomplete, as any image of human rela- 
tions must be when reflected upon the truth, beauty, and 
goodness of the Eternal Perfection ; but it expresses more 
fully than political or judicial metaphors the nature of 
our relations to God. We are born of the life of God ; 
nurtured and sustained by his care, educated by his laws, 
corrected by his discipline, guided by his providence, and 
redeemed by his love. It was under the image of the 
fatherhood of God that Jesus conveyed his most touching 
lessons of the divine attitude toward humanity. How 
beautifully that love is pictured in the parable of the 
Prodigal Son ! The father is not vindictive, cruel, or un- 
forgiving ; but when the son " was yet a great way off, 
his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran and fell 
on his neck and kissed him." If historical Christianity 
may be charged with presenting conceptions of God that 
are unworthy to be perpetuated, we must also gratefully 
remember that it has likewise bequeathed to us tender 
parables of the divine mercy and goodness, which shall 
forever abide as proofs of the "light of the knowledge 
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." The 
parables of the Prodigal Son and the Ninety and Nine 

i Christian "Register, Nov. 16, 1882. 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 149 

are far better pictures of the divine relations to the way- 
ward and the " lost " than any of the cold, hard, creedal 
statements of Evangelical theology. So long as he sins, 
the Prodigal suffers ; but when, in penitence and self-abne- 
gation, he determines to return to his father's house, he is 
received with open arms, and the fatted calf is killed for 
the feast. No sacrificial offering, no atonement, in the 
ordinary theological sense, is required of the son to pro- 
pitiate the father. The wayward boy has suffered the 
penalty of the laws he has violated. The father's joy is 
that the son has henceforth determined to obey them. 

This simple parable of Jesus exposes what we believe 
to be a cardinal error in the Orthodox system, — namely, 
the presumed necessity of a belief in the atonement of 
Jesus as a condition of salvation. Some of the moral 
objections to this view we have already pointed out. It 
abrogates the divine law instead of honoring it. It teaches 
that the actual consequences of sin may be averted by a 
simple belief in the merits of the blood of Jesus. It 
confers a righteousness which is imputative, not real. It 
presumes that God needs to be reconciled to the sinner, as 
well as the sinner to God. 

The difficulties which the common view of the atone- 
ment presents disappear under a higher, broader, and 
more rational conception of divine and human nature. 
Human nature is not at enmity with God, and God is not 
at enmity with human nature. God is present in humanity 
and in the world, " reconciling the world to himself." The 
natural and the spiritual world are not in conflict. The 
laws of nature are manifestations of the life of God. 
The will of God is not capricious or arbitrary ; it is simply 
the divine righteousness fulfilling itself. There is no 
divine law, conceived in its universal aspects, but has some 
element of good in it. The salvation of humanity is found 
in reconciliation to the eternal truth, beauty, and good- 
ness, — in the adjustment of the human will to that which 



150 THE DOOM OF THE 

is divine. The end of salvation is not release from an 
arbitrary and unending punishment, but the attainment 
of perfection in character. No higher ideal has ever been 
raised for humanity than the ideal of Jesus : " Be ye per- 
fect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." 

TRIUMPH OF THE GOOD. 

Whatever figure we may choose in which to picture the 
divine character, none can be satisfactory to-day which 
does not represent God as absolute righteousness. It is 
our trust in the righteousness of God, joined to an equal 
trust in his infinite goodness and infinite power, which 
justifies and even compels our faith in the final triumph 
of the good. Evil is but a relative term; it cannot be a 
permanent element in the universe. 

Our trust in God's goodness does not extinguish the 
idea of retribution in the next life ; it may even require 
us to believe in it ; since retribution is but a fulfilment of 
the divine law, and a part of the process by which hu- 
manity is purified and redeemed. Reason and faith alike 
forbid us to suppose that the sphere of human education, 
and the rewards and punishments which belong to it, is 
confined to this life. God is not hampered by time-limits 
in the development of a human soul. 

"We cannot argue," 1 says Channing, "that a being is 
not destined for a good, because he does not instantly 
attain it. We begin as children, and are yet created for 
maturity. So we begin life imperfect in our intellectual 
and moral powers, and yet are destined to wisdom and 
virtue. We are to read God's End in our inherent tend- 
encies, not in our first attainments." If God is able in the 
ages to come to redeem humanity from the power of sin, 
faith in his infinite mercy and goodness requires us to 
believe that he will do it. Calvinists have tried to prove 

1 Trust in the Living God. 



MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 151 

the glory of God in the damnation of the vast majority 
of the race; but how much more glorious do his justice 
and goodness appear in their redemption. If Edwards 
be true, there is joy in heaven over those that are lost ; if 
Jesus be true, the joy in heaven is over those that are 
saved. The Divine Shepherd cannot allow a single one 
of his flock to perish. The lambs he carries in his 
bosom, and every one of his sheep he knoweth by name. 
There are ninety and nine in the fold ; they have all been 
gathered in but one ; yet the tender compassion of the 
Good Shepherd yearns with infinite pity over the sheep 
that is lost. It is the Good Shepherd himself who goes 
forth to seek it. No shade of the forest, no depth of 
the valley, no cavernous darkness, can conceal the lost 
and wandering one from the Shepherd's eye. The lost is 
found, and, gently folded in the Shepherd's arms, is brought 
to the fold. So a lost and wayward soul cannot wander in 
any part of the universe, cannot reach any depth of sin, 
where the love of God cannot find and save it. Not until 
every soul of the innumerable flock shall have been gath- 
ered into the divine fold will he see of the travail of his 
soul and be satisfied. 



INDEX. 



Page 

Abbot, Ezra 23, 68, 126 

A. B. C. F. M 53, 65 

Allen, James 19 

Anderson, Rufus 60 

Andover Creed 25 

Apostles' Creed 26 

Arminians 30, 79, 125 

Auburn Declaration .... 116 
Augsburg Confession 26, 27, 28, 98 

Augustine, St 6, 26, 136 

Aquinas, Thomas 6 

Barnes, Albert 54, 72, 73, 95, 99, 100, 
101, 102, 104 

Baxter, Richard 18, 67 

Beach, John 86, 87 

Bellows, H. W 68 

Bethune, George W 60 

Boardman, S. W. . . . 100, 101 

Boothroyd 16 

Boston Confession . . 44, 45, 47, 67 
Boston Sunday Herald ... 91 

Boston, Thomas 86 

Bowman, Francis 60 

Bremen Theologians at Dort . 31 

Brooke, Stopford, A 128 

Burkitt, William 15 

Burnet, Bishop 39 

Butler, Bishop 138 

Calvin, John 4, 9, 10, 11, 18, 29, 30, 
37, 67, 71, 97, 143 

Cambridge Synod 44 

Canons of Dort ...... 41 

Central Christian Advocate . . 85 

Channing, William Ellery . 97, 102, 

114, 116, 138, 139, 140, 141, 145, 150 

Chapin, E. H 68 

Chrysostom, St 6, 71 

Church of England ... 29, 39 

Clarke, Adam 15 

Cleaveland, Elisha L 93 

Colenso, Bishop . 66, 88, 95, 105 
Cook, Joseph ... 92, 111, 112 



Page 
Creed of the Park St. Church 46, 47 
Cumberland Presbyt'n Church 

of the United States ... 38 
Curio, C. S. . . . . . . 68, 80 

Davidson, Samuel 136 

Dean, John Ward 37 

Dickinson, Jonathan .... 86 

Diodati 13 

Doddridge 16, 71 

" Doleful State of the Damned " 19 

Donne 125 

Dort, Synod of . 30, 31, 41, 67, 69 

Du-Moulin, Lewis 8 

Duryee, William Rankin . 100, 103, 
104, 105, 108, 109, 124, 125 

Edwards, Jonathan, the elder 19, 86, 
105, 106, 107, 116, 125, 126, 151 

Eisenmenger 11 

Ellis, George E. 133. 135, 144, 148 

Emmons, Nathanael . 20, 21, 50, 51, 

69, 74, 105, 116, 125 

Episcopius 30 

Estius 13 

Examiner, The 70 

Fairchild, James H 63 

Farrar, Canon 5, 7, 12, 68, 4 89, 98 
Flavel ! 18 

Gladden, Washington ... 91 
Goodwin, E. P. . 63, 64, 92, 111 
Goulburn, Dean . . . . 17, 71 
' ' Grand Motive to Missionary 

Effort, The" 65 

Gregory the Great 6 

Hall, Gordon 57, 102 

Henry, Matthew .... 14, 67 

Hervey, William 58 

Heubner 16 

Hodge, A. A. . . 54, 55, 102, 123 
Hodge, Charles . 28, 29, 69, 99, 102 
Hopkins, Mark .... 59, 92 



154 



INDEX. 



Page 
Independent, The ... . 91, 112 
Irish Articles of Religion . . 40 

Jenks, Francis 38 

Jerome 136 

Kirk, E. N 02, 93 

Krauth, C. P. . . . 28, 29, 31, 32 
Krotel, G. F 28 

Lambeth Articles, The . . . 40 
Lapide, Cornelius A . . . . 7 

Luther 27, 28, 137 

Lutheran Church 28 

Lyon, Mary 58 

Mallalieu, W. F 84 

Marckius 31 

Mather, Cotton 19, 38 

Melanchthon 27, 28 

Miller, Samuel 77 

Molinseus 31 

Momerie, Dr 108 

Moody, Joshua 19 

Moody, S 19 

Morris, E. D 9 

Murray, John 68 

New School Presbyterians . . 115 
North British Review ... 66 
Norton, Andrews 48 

Olshausen 17 

Origen 68 

Orthodox Lady 69 

Orthodox Minister 69 

Owen, John J 16 

Oxenham, F. N 5, 6, 89 

Park, Edwards A. 20, 50, 54, 69, 111 
Park St. Church, Creed of 46, 47, 48 
Patterson, Robert W. . . . 61, 77 

Patton, W. W 60, 61, 90 

Personal Experience .... 78 
Plymouth Declaration, The . . 44 
Pond, Enoch . 21, 22, 52, 56, 69, 71 
Pond, George H. . . . 62, 94, 105 

Presbyterian, The 70 

Presbyterian Board . . . 129, 130 
Princeton Review 55 



Page 
Pusey, Edward B. ... 5, 89 
Pyle, Thomas 87 

Recupito, Giulio Cesare ... 7 
Reformed (Dutch) Church -in 
America 41 

Savoy Declaration ... 43, 45, 67 
Saxon Visitation Articles ... 38 
Saybrook Platform ... 25, 44 
Schaff, Philip 28, 29, 31, 74, 95, 100, 
109, 114, 116 
Scotch Confession of Faith . . 40 

Scougal, Henry 74 

Shedd, W. G. T. . 3, 4, 53, 62, 71, 

95, 144 

Skinner, Thomas H. 59, 101, 102, 105 

Smyth, Egbert Ill 

Smyth, Newman Ill 

Spring, Gardiner 76 

Spurgeon, Charles H 121 

Swing, David 122 

Swiss Theologians at Dort . . 30 

Thirty-Nine Articles, The 25, 39, 41 
Townsend, Jonathan .... 18 

Treat, S. B 54 

Twisse, William .... 33, 37 
Tyler, M. C 37 

Weiss, Bernhard ..... 23 
W r elwood, Andrew . . 105, 107, 108 
Wesley, Charles 80, 83, 84, 86, 126 

Wesley, John 85 

Westminster Assembly of Di- 
vines 14, 33, 69 

Westminster Confession . 25, 31, 32, 

33, 37, 38, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 67, 90, 

98, 114, 146 

Westminster Larger Catechism 12, 

42, 43, 118, 122 

Whedon, D.D 119 

Wigglesworth, Michael 33, 37, 86 

Wight, J. K 55 

Willard, Samuel 19 

Winslow, Myron 58 

Withrow, J. L. 4, 25, 26, 38, 49, 100 
Wordsworth, Bishop .... 17 

Zerneke 27 

Zurich Consensus ..... 30 



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